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LIFE IN THE WOODS 



A TRUE STORY OF THE CANADIAN BUSH 



LIFE IN THE WOODS 

A TRUE STORY OF THE 
CANADIAN B USH 



By CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D. 



1 My Native Land, Good-night ! 




STRAHAN & CO. 

56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 

1873 



n^ 






JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. 



.'V 



. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Boy-dreams about travelling — Our family determines to go to 
Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Our 
passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — 
Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship 
— The fishing-grounds — See whales and ice-bergs — Porpoises 
— Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — The great Gulf of St Law- 
rence — Thick ice-fogs — See land at last — Sailing up the river 
— Land at Quebec pp. I — 17 

CHAPTER II. 

Quebec — Wolfe — Montcalm's skull — Toronto — We set off for 
the bush — Mud-roads — A rough ride — Our log-house — How it 
was built — Our barn— We get oxen and cows — Elephant and 
Buckeye — Unpacking our stores — What some of our neigh- 
bours brought when they came — Hot days — Bush costumes — 
Sun-strokes— My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part 
of the house- work pp. 18 — 39 

CHAPTER III. 

Clearing the land — David's bragging, and the end of it — Burning 
the log-heaps — Our logging bee — What prejudice can do — 
Our fences and crops nearly burned — The woods on fire — 
Building a snake-fence — ' Shingle ' pigs give us sore trouble — 
/ Breachy ' horses and cattle pp. 40 — 55 



vi Contents. 



CHAPTER IV. 

We begin our preparations for sowing— Gadflies— Mosquitoes 
— Harrowing experiences — A huge fly — Sandflies — The 
poison of insects and serpents— Winter wheat— The wonders 
of plant-life— Our first 'sport'— Woodpeckers— ' Chitmunks' 
—The blue jay— The blue bird— The flight of birds 

pp. 56—72 

CHAPTER V. 

Some family changes — Amusements — Cow-hunting — Our ' side- 
line ' — The bush — Adventures with rattlesnakes — Garter- 
snakes — A frog's flight for life— Black squirrels . pp. 73—86 



CHAPTER VI. 

Spearing^fish — Ancient 'British canoes — Indian ones — A bargain 
with an Indian — Henry's cold bath — Canadian thunder- 
storms — Poor Yorick's death — Our glorious autumns — The 
change of the leaf— Sunsets — Indian summer- — The fall rains 
and the roads — The first snow — Canadian cold — A winter 
landscape — 'Ice-storms' — Snow crystals — The minute per- 
fection of God's works — Deer-shooting — David's misfortune 
— Useless cruelty — Shedding of the stag's horns pp. 87 — -124 



CHAPTER VII. 

Wolves — My adventure with a bear — Courtenay's cow and the 
wolves — A fright in the woods by night — The river freezes — 
Our winter fires — Cold, cold, cold ! — A winter's journey- 
Sleighing — Winter mufflings— Accidents through intense cold 

pp. 125—139 



Contents. vii 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The aurora borealis— ' Jumpers' — Squaring timber — Rafts — 
Camping out — A public ^meeting — Winter fashions — My toe 
frozen — A long winter's walk — Hospitality — Nearly lost in 
the woods pp. 140 — 155 

CHAPTER IX. 

Involuntary racing — A backwoods parsonage— Graves in the 
wilderness — Notions of equality — Arctic winters — Ruffed 
grouse — Indian fishing in winter — A marriage — Our winter's 
pork pp. 156 — 167 

CHAPTER X. 

Our neighbours — Insect plagues — Military officers' families in 

the bush — An awkward mistake — Dr D nearly shot for a 

bear — Major M Our candles — Fortunate escape from a 

fatal accident . pp. 168 — 178 



CHAPTER XL 

* Now Spring returns ' — Sugar-making — Bush psalmody — 
Bush preaching — Worship under difficulties — A clerical Mrs 
Partington — Biology — A ghost — ' It slips good' — Squatters 

pp. 179—193 

CHAPTER XII. 

Bush magistrates— Indian forest guides — Senses quickened by 
necessity — Breaking up of the ice — Depth of the frost — A grave 
in winter. — A ball — A holiday coat .... pp. 194 — 204 



viii Contents. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Wild leeks — Spring birds — Wilson's poem on the blue-bird — 
Downy woodpeckers — Passenger pigeons — Their numbers — 
Roosting places — The frogs — Bull frogs — Tree frogs — Flying 
squirrels , „ , . . pp. 205 — 217 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Our spring crops — Indian corn— Pumpkins — Melons — Fruits — 
Wild Flowers. . . . pp. 218— 224 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Indians — Wigwams — Dress — Can the Indians be civilized ? 
— Their past decay as a race — Alleged innocence of savage 
\ life — Narrative of Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary 

pp. 225—257 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The medicine-man — Painted faces- — Medals — An embassy — 
Religious notions — Feast of the dead — Christian Indians — 
Visit to the Indians on Lake Huron — Stolidity of the Indians 
— Henry exorcises an Indian's rifle .... pp. 258 — 276 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The humming-bird — Story of a pet — Canada a good country 
for poor men — A bush story of misfortune — Statute labour 
— Tortoises — The hay season — Our waggon-driving — Henry 
and I are nearly drowned — Henry falls ill — Backwood 
doctors pp. 277 — 295 



Contents. ix 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

American men and women — Fireflies— Profusion of insect life — 
Grasshoppers — Frederick and David leave Canada — Soap- 
making — Home-made candles — Recipe for washing quickly — 
Writing letters — The parson for driver . . . pp.296 — 310 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Americanisms — Our poultry — The wasps — Their nests — * Bob's' 
skill in killing them — Racoons — A hunt — Racoon cake — The 
town of Busaco — Summer ' sailing ' — Boy drowned — French 
settlers pp. 311—324 

CHAPTER XX. 

Apple-bees — Orchards— Gorgeous display of apple-blossom — 
A meeting in the woods — The ague — Wild parsnips — Man lost 
in the woods pp.325 — 337 

CHAPTER XXI. 

A tornado — Bats — Deserted lots — American inquisitiveness — 
An election agent pp. 338 — 346 

CHAPTER XXII. 

A journey to Niagara — River St Clair — Detroit — A slave's escape 
— An American steamer — Description of the Falls of Niagara 
— Fearful catastrophe pp. 347 — 363 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

The suspension-bridge at Niagara — The whirlpool — The battle 
of Lundy's Lane — Brock's monument — A soldier nearly 
drowned •••*¥£- 3^4 — 37 1 



Contents. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Canadian lakes — The exile's love of home — The coloured 

people in Canada — Rice — The Maid of the Mist — Home-spun 

cloth — A narrow road — A grumbler — New England emigrants 

-A potato-pit — The winter's wood .... pp. 372 — 387 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Thoughts for the future — Changes — Too -hard study — Educa- 
tion in Canada — Christmas markets — Winter amusements — 
Ice-boats — Very cold ice— Oil-springs — Changes on the farm 
— Growth of Canada — The American climate— Old England 
again pp. 388 — 405 



LIFE IN THE WOODS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Boy-dreams about travelling— Our family determines to go to 
Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Our 
passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — 
Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil 
ship — The fishing-grounds — See whales and icebergs — Por- 
poises — Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — The great Gulf of St 
Lawrence — Thick ice-fogs — See land at last — Sailing up the 
river — Land at Quebec. 

WONDER if ever there were a boy who 
did not wish to travel ? I know I did, 
and used to spend many an hour thinking 
of all the wonderful things I should see, 
and of what I would bring home when I returned. 
Books of travel I devoured greedily — and very good 
reading for boys, as well as for grown men, I have 
always thought them. I began with ' Robinson 
Crusoe/ like most boys — for who has not read his 
story ? Burckhardt, the traveller, found a young Arab 
reading a translation of it in the door of his father's 
i 




2 Dreams adotct Travelling. 

tent in the desert. But I don't think I ever wished to 
be like him, or to roam in a wild romantic way, or ' go 
to sea,' as it is called, like many other boys I have 
known, which is a very different thing from having 
harmless fancies, that one would like to see strange races 
of men and strange countries. Some of my schoolmates, 
whom nothing would content but being sailors, early 
cured me of any thought of being one, if ever I had it, 
by what I knew of their story when they came back. 
One of them, James Roper, I did not see for some years 
after he went off, but when I met him at last among the 
ships, he was so worn and broken down I hardly knew 
him again, and he had got so many of the low forecastle 
ways about him, that I could not bear his company. 
Another, Robert Simpson, went one voyage to Trebi- 
zond, but that cured him. He came back perfectly 
contented to stay at home, as he had found the 
romance of sailoring, which had lured him away, a very 
different thing from the reality. He had never counted 
on being turned out of his "bed every other night or so 
for something or other, as he was, or being clouted 
with a wet swab by some sulky fellow, or having to 
fetch and carry for the men, and do their bidding, or 
to climb wet rigging in stormy weather, and get 
drenched every now and then, without any chance of 
changing his clothes ; not to speak of the difference 
between his nice room at home and the close, crowded, 
low-roofed forecastle, where he could hardly see for 
tobacco-smoke, and where he had to eat and sleep with 



The First Day on Board. 3 

companions whom he would not have thought of 
speaking to before he sailed. He came back quite 
sobered down, and, after a time, went to study law, 
and is now a barrister in good practice. 

Yet I was very glad when I learned that we were 
going to America. The great woods, and the sport 
I would have with the deer and bears in them, and the 
Indians, of whom I had read so often, and the curious 
wildness there was in the thought of settling where 
there were so few people, and living so differently 
from anything I had known at home, quite captivated 
me. I was glad when the day of sailing came, and 
went on board our ship, the Ocean King, with as much 
delight as if I had been going on a holiday trip. There 
were eight of us altogether' — five brothers and three 
sisters (my father and mother were both dead), and I 
had already one brother in America, while another 
stayed behind to push his way in England. The anchor 
once heaved, we were soon on our way down the 
Mersey, and the night fell on us while we were still 
exploring the wonders of the ship, and taking an 
occasional peep over the side at the shore. When we 
had got into the Channel, the wind having come round 
to the south-east, the captain resolved to go by the 
northern route, passing the upper end of Ireland. All 
we saw of it, however, was very little ; indeed, most of 
us did not see it at all, for the first swell of the sea had 
sent a good many to their berths, in all stages of sick- 
ness. One old gentleman, a Scotchman, who had been 



4 Cure for Sea-sickness. 

boasting that he had a preventive that would keep him 
clear of it, made us all laugh by his groans and 
wretchedness ; for his specific had not only failed, but 
had set him off amongst the first. He had been told 
that if he took enough gingerbread and whisky, he 
might face any sea, and he had followed the advice 
faithfully ; but as the whisky itself was fit to make him 
sick, even on shore, you may judge how much it and the 
gingerbread together helped him when the ship was 
heaving and rolling under his feet. We boys did not fail, 
of course, when we heard him lamenting that either the 
one or the other had crossed his lips, to come over 
their names pretty often in his hearing, and advise each 
other to try some, every mention of the words bringing 
out an additional shudder of disgust from the unfor- 
tunate sufferer. My eldest sister had sent me, just 
before coming on board, for some laudanum and 
mustard, which she was to mix and apply some way 
that was sure, she said, to keep her well ; but she got 
sick so instantly on the ship beginning to move that 
she forgot them, and we had the mustard afterwards at 
dinner in America, and the laudanum was a long time 
in the house for medicine. For a few days everything 
was unpleasant enough, but gradually all got right 
again, and even the ladies ventured to reappear on 
deck. 

Of course, among a number of people gathered in a 
ship, you were sure to meet strange characters. A little 
light man in a wig was soon the butt of the cabin, he 



Our Passengers* 



«5 l 



would ask such silly questions, and say such outrageous 
things. He was taking cheeses, and tea, and I don't 
know what else, to America with him, for fear he would 
get nothing to eat there ; and he was dreadfully alarmed 
by one of the passengers, who had been over before, 
telling him he would find cockroach pie the chief 
dainty in Canada. I believe the cheeses he had with 
him had come from America at first. He thought the 
best thing to make money by in Canada was to sow all 
the country with mustard-seed, it yielded such a great 
crop, he said; and he seemed astonished at all the 
table laughing at the thought of what could possibly be 
done with it. There was another person in the cabin 
— a stiff, conceited man, with a very strange head, the 
whole face and brow running back from the chin, and 
great standing-out ears. He was a distant relation of 
some admiral, I believe ; but if he had been the admiral 
himself, he could not have carried his head higher than 
he did. Nobody was good enough for him. It seemed 
a condescension in him to talk with any one. But he 
soon lost all his greatness, notwithstanding his airs, by,, 
his asking one day when we were speaking about Italy, 
* What river it was that ran north and south along the 
coast ? ' in that country. We were speaking of a road, 
and he thought it was about a river. Then he asked, 
the same day, where the Danube was, and if it were a 
large river ; and when some one spoke about Sicily, 
and said that it had been held by the Carthaginians, he 
wished to know if these people held it now. Boy as I 



6 Henry's Adventure. 

was, I could not help seeing what a dreadful thing it 
was to be so ignorant \ and I determined that I would 

never be like Mr (I sha'n't tell his name), at any 

rate, but would learn as much as ever I could. 

I daresay we were troublesome enough to the captain 
sometimes, but, if so, he took his revenge on one of 
us after a time. One day we were playing with a rope 
and pulley which was hooked high up in the rigging. 
There was a large loop at the one end, and the other, 
after passing through the block, hung down on the deck. 
Henry had just put this loop over his shoulders and 
fitted it nicely below his arms, when the captain chanced 
to see him, and, in an instant, before he knew what he 
was going to do, he had hauled him up ever so high, 
with all the passengers looking at him and laughing at 
the ridiculous figure he cut. It was some time before 
he would let him down, and as he was a pretty .big lad, 
and thought himself almost a man, he felt terribly 
affronted. But he had nothing for it when he got 
down but to hide in his berth till his pride got cooled 
and till the laugh stopped. We were all careful enough 
to keep out of Captain Morrison's way after that. 

One way or other the days passed very pleasantly 
to us boys, whatever they were to older people. It 
was beautiful when the weather was fine and the wind 
right, to see how we glided through the green galleries 
of the sea, which rose, crested with white, at each side. 
One day and night we had, what we thought, a great 
storm. The sails were nearly all struck, and I heard 



We encounter a Storm. y 

the mate say that the two that were left did more 
harm than good, because they only drove the ship 
deeper into the water. When it grew nearly dark, I 
crept up the cabin-stairs to look along the deck at the 
waves ahead. I could see them rising like great black 
mountains seamed with snow, and coming with an 
awful motion towards us, making the ship climb a 
huge hill, as it were, the one moment, and go down 
so steeply the next, that you could not help being 
afraid that it was sinking bodily into the depths of the 
sea. The wind, meanwhile, roared through the ropes 
and yards, and every little while there was a hollow 
thump of some wave against the bows, followed by 
the rush of water over the bulwarks. I had read the 
account of the storm in Virgil, and am sure he must 
have seen something like what I saw that night to 
have written it. There is an ode in Horace to him 
when he was on the point of setting out on a voyage. 
Perhaps he saw it then. The description in the Bible 
is, however, the grandest picture of a storm at sea : 
1 The Lord commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, 
which lifteth up the waves of the deep. They mount 
up to heaven, they go down again to the depths : their 
soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and 
fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their 
wit's end.' ' The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind 
and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His 
feet' Yet I have found since, that though the waves 
appear so very high, they are much lower than we sup- 



8 Height of the Waves. 

pose, our notions of them being taken from looking 
up at them from the hollow between two. Dr Scores- 
by, a great authority, measured those of the Atlantic 
in different weathers, and found that they seldom rise 
above fifteen feet, a great storm only causing them 
to rise to thirty-five, or, at most, forty feet, as the 
height of the Atlantic storm-waves, which is very 
different from i running mountains high/ as we often 
hear said. I could not help pitying the men who had 
to go up to the yards and rigging in the terrible wind 
and rain, with the ship heaving and rolling so dread- 
fully, and work with the icy cold sheets and ropes. 
Poor fellows ! it seems a wonder how they ever can hold 
on. Indeed, they too often lose their hold, and then 
there is no hope for them ; down they go, splash into 
the wild sea, with such a scream of agony as no one 
can ever forget after having heard it. My brother, on 
crossing some years after, saw a man thus lost — a fine, 
healthy Orkneyman, whom some sudden lurch of the 
ship threw from the outside of the yard. Though it 
was broad daylight, and though they would have done 
anything to help him as they saw him rising on the 
wave, farther and farther behind them, swimming 
bravely, they were perfectly unable even to make an 
effort, the sea rolling so wildly, and the ship tearing on 
through the waves so swiftly. So they had, with hearts 
like to break, to let him drown before their very eyes. 

As we got further over we heard a great deal about 
the Banks of Newfoundland, and, naturally enough, 



The Bottom of the Ocean. 9 

thought the shores of that island were what was 
meant ; but we found, when we reached them, that it 
was only the name given to the shallower part of the 
sea to the south of the coast. The soundings for the 
electric telegraph have since shown that from Ireland 
on the one side, and Newfoundland on the other, a 
level table-land forms the floor of the ocean, at no 
great depth, for some hundreds of miles, the space 
between sinking suddenly on both sides into unfathom- 
able abysses. What the depth of the Atlantic is at 
the deepest is not known, but I remember seeing a 
notice of a surveying ship, which had been able to 
sink a line in the southern section of it to the wonder- 
ful depth of seven miles, finding the bottom only with 
that great length of rope. The banks are, no doubt, 
formed in part from the material carried by the great 
ocean current which flows up from the Gulf of Mexico, 
washing the shores all the way; and then, passing 
Newfoundland, reaches across even to the most north- 
ern parts of Europe and the Arctic circle. If the 
quantity of mud, and gravel, and sand deposited on 
the Banks be great enough to bury some of the many 
wrecks of all sizes which go to the bottom there, what 
a wonderful sight some future ages may have ! The 
floor of the ocean has often, elsewhere, been gradually 
or suddenly raised into dry land ; and if the Banks 
should be so, and the wrecks be buried in them 
before they had rotted away, geologists of those 
days will perhaps be laying bare in some quarry, 



io A Fossil Ship. 

now far down in the sea, the outline of a fossil 
ship, with all the things it had in it when it was 
lost! 

We met a great many fishing-boats in this part, 
some from Newfoundland, some from Nova Scotia, 
others, again, from the northern coasts of the United 
States, with not a few all the way from France. We 
were becalmed one day close to some from the State 
of Maine, and one of them very soon sent off a boat 
to us with some as fine looking men in it as you could 
well see, to barter fish with the captain for some pork. 
For a piece or two of the sailor's mess-pork, which I 
thought dreadful-looking, it was so yellow and fat, 
they threw on board quite a number of cod-fish and 
some haddocks, giving us, I thought, by far the best 
of the exchange. I am told that a great many of 
these fishing-vessels are lost every year by storms, 
and occasionally some are run down and sunk in a 
moment by a ship passing over them. They are so 
rash as to neglect hanging out lights in many cases, 
and the w r eather is, moreover, often so very foggy, 
that, even when they do, it is impossible to see them. 
The ships, if going at all fast, sound fog-horns every 
now and then on such days — that is, they should do 
it — but I fear they sometimes forget. There is far 
less humanity in some people than one would like to 
see, even the chance of causing death itself seeming 
to give them no concern. I remember once going in 
a steamer up the Bay of Fundy, over part of the same 



See Whales and Icebergs. 1 1 



cb * 



ground, when we struck a fishing-schooner in the dead 
of the night ; but the captain only swore at it for being 
in his way, and never stopped to see if it were much 
injured or not, though for anything he or any one 
knew, it might be in a sinking state. Whether it be 
thoughtlessness or passion at the time, or stony hard- 
heartedness, it is an awful thing to be unkind. Uncle 
Toby, who put the fly out of the window rather than 
kill it, makes us love him for his tenderness even in 
an instance so slight. 

One day we saw two whales at a short distance from 
the ship, but their huge black backs, and the spout 
of water they made from their breathing-holes when 
they were taking a fresh breath, was all we saw of 
them. Some of the youngsters, however, made some 
sport out of the sight by telling a poor simple woman, 
who had got into the cabin, how they had read of a 
ship that once struck on a great black island in £he 
middle of the sea and went down, and how the 
sailors got off on the rock, and landed their pro- 
visions, and were making themselves comfortable, 
when one of them unfortunately thought he would 
kindle a fire to cook something ; but had hardly done 
it before they discovered that they had got on the 
back of a sleeping whale, which no sooner felt the heat 
burning it than it plunged down into the waves with 
all on it ! It is a part of one of the boys' stories we 
have all read, but the poor creature believed it, 
listening to them with her eyes fixed on their faces, 

1 



12 Icebergs. 

and expressing her pity for the sailors who had made 
the mistake. 

We had two or three icebergs in sight when near 
Newfoundland, and very beautiful they were. Only 
think of great mountains of ice shining in the sun with 
every colour that light can give, and cascades of 
snowy-white water leaping down their sides into the 
sea. Those we saw were perhaps from eighty to a 
hundred feet high, but they are sometimes even two 
hundred ; and as there are eight feet of ice below the 
water for every one above, this would make a two 
hundred feet iceberg more than the third of a mile 
from the bottom to the top. They are formed on the 
shores of the icy seas in the north, by the alternate 
melting and freezing of the edge of those ice-rivers 
which we call glaciers, which get thrust out from the 
land till they are undermined by the sea, and cracked 
by summer thaws, and then tumble into the waters, to 
find their way wherever the currents may carry them. 
Dr Kane and Captain M'Clintock both saw them in 
the different stages of their growth ; and I don't know 
a more interesting narrative than that of the ascent to 
the top of the great frozen stream, on the shore of 
Washington's Land, by the former, and his looking 
away to the north, east, and south, over the vast, 
broken, many-coloured continent of ice, which stretches 
in awful depth and unbroken continuity over Green- 
land. The icebergs often carry off from the shore a 
vast quantity of stones and gravel, which gets frozen 



Porpoises and Sea-birds. 13 

into them. Dr Scoresby says he has seen one of 
them carrying, he should think, from fifty to a hundred 
thousand tons of rock on it. It has, no doubt, been 
in this way that most of the great blocks and boulders 
of stone, different from any hi their neighbourhood, 
which lie scattered over many parts of the world, have 
been taken to their present places.* 

I must not forget the porpoises — great pig-like fish, 
which once or twice mocked us by racing alongside, 
darting a-head every now and then like arrows, as if 
to show us how slow we were in comparison — nor the 
birds, which never left us the whole way, and must 
sleep on the water when they do sleep — nor the beauti- 
ful lights which shone in the sea at night. We used 
to sit at the stern looking at them for long together. 
The ridges of the waves would sometimes seem all on 
fire, and streaks and spots of light would follow 
the ship with every moment's progress. Sometimes, 
as the water rushed round the stern and up from 
beneath, they would glitter like a shower of stars or 
diamonds, joining presently in a sheet of flame. Now 
they would look like balls of glowing metal; then, 
presently, they would pass like ribbons of light. 
There was no end to the combinations or changes of 
beauty; the very water joined to heighten them by its 

* What is known as the * boulder clay,' however, seems 
rather to be the moraine of ancient glaciers — that is, the wreck 
of broken rocks torn away by them in their passage through the 
valleys, and now left bare by their having melted away. 



14 Lights in the Sea. 

ceaseless mingling of colours, from the whitest foam, 
through every shade of green, to the dark mass of the 
ocean around. These appearances come from the 
presence of myriads of creatures of all sizes, chiefly the 
different kinds of Sea-nettles,* some of which are so 
small as to need a microscope to show their parts, 
while others form large masses, and shine like the 
suns of these watery constellations. They are lumin- 
ous by a phosphoric light they are able to secrete ; 
their brilliancy being thus of the same kind as that 
which smokes and burns in the dark from the skin of 
fish, and makes the lights in so many different insects. 
The phosphorus used in manufactures is obtained 
from burned bones. I have often seen a similar light 
in the back woods on the old half-rotten stumps of 
trees which had been cut down. The glow-worm of 
England and the fire-fly of Canada are familiar ex- 
amples of the same wonderful power of self-illumin- 
ation. Indeed, few countries are without some 
species of insect possessing this characteristic. One 
can't help thinking how universal life is when they see 
it as it is shown in these sights at sea — millions on 
millions of shining creatures in the path of a single 
ship ; and the happiness which life gives us in our 
youth makes us admire the kindness of God, who, by 
making everything so full of it, has crowded the air, 
and earth, and waters with so much enjoyment. 

* The jelly-fish, or medusa, which we so often see on our 
beaches, is a familiar example of the class. 



Thick Ice-fogs. 15 

Our sabbaths on board were not quite like those at 
home ; but, as we had a clergyman with us, who was 
going with his family to a chaplaincy in the Far West, 
we had prayers and sermons in the forenoon, when 
the weather permitted. But a good many of the 
passengers were not very respectful to the day, and 
some, who, I dare say, were very orderly on Sundays 
at home, seemed to act as if to be on a voyage made 
every day a week-day. 

We were now in the great Gulf of St Lawrence, 
which was called so because Cabot, who discovered 
it, chanced to do so on the day set apart to that saint. 
But we were some time in it before we saw land, and 
there was more care taken about the position of the 
ship than ever before, for fear we should, like so 
many vessels, fall foul of the island of Anticosti, or 
run on shore in a fog. We had had thick weather 
occasionally from our approaching Newfoundland, and 
it still prevailed now and then till we got near Quebec. 
The icebergs coming down from the north, and the 
different temperature of the air coming over them and 
over the great frozen regions, cause these thick mists 
by condensing the evaporation from the warmer sea 
and preventing its rising into the air. We could 
sometimes hardly see the length of the bowsprit before 
us, and as the sun would be shut out for days 
together, so that we could not find out our position, it 
made every one anxious and half afraid. Many ships 
are lost by being muffled in these thick clouds. They 



1 6 Sailing tcp the River. 

drive, at full speed, against icebergs or on sunken 
rocks, or ashore on the wild coast, when they think 
themselves safe in an open clear sea. I often won- 
dered when crossing again, some years after, in a 
great steamer, how we ever escaped. On we would 
go in it, with the fog-bell ringing and horns blowing, 
to be sure, but in perfect blind ignorance of what lay 
a few yards ahead. Other ships, icebergs, rocks, or 
the iron shore, might be close at hand, yet on, on, up 
and down went the great shafts, and beat, beat, went 
the huge paddle-wheels — the ship trembling all over, 
as if even it were half uneasy. It is a wonder, not 
that so many, but that so few, ships should be lost, 
covering the sea as they do at all seasons, like great 
flocks of seafowl. 

After a time the land became visible at last, first 
on one side and then on the other, and the pilot was 
taken on board — a curious looking man to most of us, 
in his extraordinary mufflings, and with his broken 
French-English. As we sailed up the river the views 
on the banks became very pleasing. The white 
houses, with their high roofs, like those we see in 
pictures of French chateaux, and the churches roofed 
with tin, and as white underneath as the others, and 
the line of fields of every shade, from the brown earth 
to the dark green wheat, and the curious zigzag wooden 
fences, and the solemn woods, every here and there 
coming out at the back of the picture, like great grim 
sentinels of the land, made it impossible to stay away 



Sailing up the River. 1 7 

from the deck. Then there were the grand sunsets, 
with the water like glass, and the shores reflected in 
them far down into their depths, and the curtains of 
gold and crimson in the west, where the sun sank out 
of sight, and the light changing into crimson, and 
violet and green, by turns, as the twilight faded into 
night. 



i8 




CHAPTER II. 

Quebec— Wolfe— Montcalm's skull— Toronto— We set cfif for the 
bush— Mud-roads— A rough ride— Our log-house— How it 
was built— Our barn— We get oxen and cows— Elephant and 
Buckeye— Unpacking our stores— What some of our neigh- 
bours brought when they came— Hot days— Bush costumes— 
Sun-strokes— My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part 
of the house-work. 

|UR landing at Quebec was only for a very- 
short time, till some freight was delivered, 
our vessel having to go up to Montreal 
before we left it. But we had stay 
enough to let us climb the narrow streets of this, the 
oldest of Canadian cities, and to see some of its 
sights. The view from different points was unspeak- 
ably grand to us after being so long pent up in a ship. 
Indeed, in itself, it is very fine. Cape Diamond and 
the fortifications hanging high in the air — the great 
, basin below, like a sheet of the purest silver, where a 
hundred sail of the line might ride in safety — the 
village spires and the fields of every shape, dotted 
with countless white cottages, the silver thread of the 
River St Charles winding hither and thither among 
them, and, in the distance, shutting in this varied 



Montcalm' 's Shell. 19 

loveliness, a range of lofty mountains, purple and 
blue by turns, standing out against the sky in every 
form of picturesque beauty, made altogether a glorious 
panorama. 

Of course, the great sight of sights to a Briton is the 
field of battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe, 
on the 13th September, 1759, won f° r us > at tne P r i ce 
of his own life, the magnificent colonies of what is now 
British North America. Wolfe's body was taken to 
England for burial, and now lies in the vault below the 
parish church at Greenwich. That of Montcalm, the 
French general, who, also, was killed in the battle, was 
buried in the Ursuline Convent, where they showed us 
a ghastly relic of him — his fleshless, eyeless skull, kept 
now in a little glass case, as if it were a thing fit to be 
exhibited. It was to me a horrible sight to look at the 
grinning death's head, and think that it was once the 
seat of the gallant spirit who died so nobly at his post. 
His virtues, which all honour, are his fitting memorial 
in every mind, and his appropriate monument is the 
tomb erected by his victorious enemies — not this 
parading him in the dishonour and humiliation of the 
grave. It is the spirit of which we speak when we talk 
of a hero, and there is nothing in common with it and 
the poor mouldering skull that once contained it. 

Quebec is, as I have said, a beautiful place in sum- 
mer, but it must be bad enough in winter. The snow 
lies till well on in May, and it is so deep that, in the 
country, everything but houses and trees and other high 



20 Toronto. 

objects are covered. The whole landscape is one un- 
broken sheet of white, over which you may go in any 
direction without meeting or seeing the smallest 
obstacle. But people get used to anything ; and even 
the terrible cold is so met and resisted by double 
window-sashes, and fur caps, and gloves, and coats, 
that the inhabitants seem actually to enjoy it. 

When we got to Toronto, we found that my brother 
Robert, who was already in the country, had been 
travelling in different directions to look out a place for 
us, and had at length bought a farm in the township of 
Bidport, on the banks of the River St Clair. We 
therefore stayed no longer in Toronto than possible, 
but it took us some time to get everything put right 
after the voyage, and we were further detained by a 
letter from my brother, telling us that the house on 
. the farm could not be got ready for us for a week 
or two longer. We had thus plenty of time to look 
about us, and strange enough everything seemed. 
The town is very different now-a-days ; but, then, it was 
a straggling collection of wooden houses of all sizes and 
shapes, a large one next to a miserable one-storey shell, 
placed with its end to the street. There were a few 
brick houses, but only a few. The streets were like a 
newly-ploughed field in rainy-weather, for mud, the 
waggons often sinking almost to the axles in it. There 
was no gas, and the pavements were both few and bad. 
It has come to be a fine place now, but to us it seemed 
very wretched. While we were waiting, we laid in 



Mud-roads. 21 

whatever provision we thought we would need for a 
good while, everything being much cheaper in Toronto 
than away in the bush. A month or less saw us moving, 
my sisters going with Andrew and Henry by water, 
while Frederic was left behind in an office ; Robert, 
my Canadian brother, and I, going by land, to get some 
business done up the country as we passed. The stage 
in which we took our places was a huge affair, hung on 
leather springs, with a broad shelf behind, supported 
by straps from the upper corners, for the luggage. 
There were three seats, the middle one movable, which 
it needed to be, as it came exactly in the centre of the 
door. The machine and its load w r ere drawn by four 
horses, rough enough, but of good bottom, as they say. 
The first few miles were very pleasant, for they had 
been macadamized, but after that, what travelling ! 
The roads had not yet dried up after the spring rains 
and thaws, and as they were only mud, and much 
travelled, the most the horses could do was to pull us 
through at a walk. When we came to a very deep 
hole, w r e had to get out till the coach floundered through 
it. Every here and there, where the water had over- 
flowed from the bush and washed the road completely 
away in its passage across it, the ground was strewn 
with rails which had been taken from the nearest fences 
to hoist out some wheels that had stuck fast. At some 
places there had been a wholesale robbery of rails, 
which had been thrown into a gap of this kind in the 
road, till it was practicable for travellers or waggons. 



22 A Rough Ride. 

• 
After a time we had to bid adieu to the comforts of a 

coach and betake ourselves to a great open waggon — 

a mere strong box, set on four wheels, with pieces of 

plank laid across the top for seats. In this affair — some 

ten feet long and about four broad — we went through 

some of the worst stages. But, beyond Hamilton, we 

got back our coach again, and for a time went on 

smoothly enough, till we reached a swamp, which had 

to be crosse.d on a road made of trees cut into lengths 

and laid side by side, their ends resting on the trunks 

of others placed lengthwise. You may think how 

smooth it would be, with each log a different size from 

the one next it — a great patriarch of the woods rising 

high between ' babes ' half its thickness. The whole 

fabric had, moreover, sunk pretty nearly to the level of 

the water, and the alder bushes every here and there 

overhung the edges. As we reached it late at night, 

and there was neither moon nor stars, and a yard too 

much either way would have sent coach and all into 

the water, men had to be got from the nearest house 

to go at the horses' heads with lanterns, and the 

passengers were politely requested to get out, and 

stumble on behind as they could, except two ladies, 

who were allowed to stay and be battered up and down 

inside, instead of having to sprawl on in the dark with 

us. This was my first experience of ' corduroy roads/ 

but we had several more stretches of them before we 

got to our journey's end. I have long ago learned all 

the varieties of badness of which roads are capable, and 



A Rottzh Ride. 



2 3 



question whether ' corduroy ' is entitled to the first 
rank. There is a kind made of thick planks, laid side 
by side, which, when they get old and broken, may 
bid fair for the palm. I have seen a stout, elderly 
lady, when the coach was at a good trot, bumped fairly 
against the roof by a sudden hole and the shock 
against the plank at the other side. But, indeed, 
6 corduroy ' is dreadful. When we came to it I tried 
everything to save my poor bones — sitting on my hands, 
or raising my body on them — but it was of little use ; on 
we went, thump, thump, thumping against one log after 
another, and this, in the last part of our journey, with 
the bare boards of an open waggon for seats once more. 
It was bad enough in the coach with stuffed seats, but 
it was awful on the hard wood. But we got through 
without an actual upset or breakdown, which is more 
than a friend of mine could say, for the coach in which 
he was went into so deep a mud-hole at one part of the 
road, that it fairly overturned, throwing the passengers 
on the top of one another inside, and leaving them no 
way of exit, when they came to themselves, but to crawl 
out through the window. It was fine weather, how- 
ever, and the leaves were making the woods beautiful, 
and the birds had begun to flit about, so that the cheer- 
fulness of nature kept us from thinking much of our 
troubles. It took us three days to go a hundred and 
fifty miles, and we stopped on the way besides for my 
brother's business, so that the rest of our party had 
reached our new home, by their route, before us. 



24 Our Log-house. 

The look of the house which was to be our dwelling 
was novel enough to me, with my old ideas about 
houses still in my head. It was built a little back 
from the river, far enough to give room for a garden 
when we had time to make one ; and the trees had 
been cut down from the water's edge to some distance 
behind the house to make things a little more cheery, 
and also to prevent the risk of any of them falling on 
our establishment in a high wind. The house itself 
had, in fact, been built of the logs procured by felling 
these patriarchs of the forest, every one of which had, as 
usual on Canadian farms, been cut down. My brother 
had left special instructions to spare some of the 
smaller ones, but the ( chopper ' had understood him 
exactly the wrong way, and had cut down those 
pointed out with especial zeal as the objects of his 
greatest dislike. Building the house must have been 
very heavy work, for it was made of great logs, the 
whole thickness of the trees, piled one on another, a 
story and a half high. The neighbours had made 
what they call a ' bee ? to help to ' raise ' it — that is, 
they had come without expecting wages, but with the 
understanding that each would get back from us, when 
he wanted it, as many days' labour as he had given. 
They manage a difficult business like that of getting up 
the outside of a log-honse more easily than one would 
think. First, the logs are cut into the proper lengths 
for the sides and the ends : then they are notched at 
the end to make them keep together 3 then an equal 



Hoiv it was Built. 25 

number are put at the four sides to be ready, and the 
first stage is over. The next step is to get four laid 
in the proper positions on the ground, and then to get 
up the rest, layer by layer, on the top of each other, 
till the whole are in their places. It is a terrible strain 
on the men, for there is nothing but sheer strength to 
help them, except that they put poles from the top of 
the last log raised, to the ground, and then, with 
handspokes, force another up the slope to its destined 
position. I have known many men terribly wrenched 
by the handspoke of some other one slipping and 
letting the whole weight of one end come upon the 
person next him. The logs at the front and back 
were all fully twenty feet long, and some of them 
eighteen inches thick, so that you may judge their , 
weight. After the square frame had been thus piled up, 
windows and a door where cut with axes, a board at 
the sides of each keeping the ends of the logs in their 
places. You may wonder how this could be done, but 
backwoodsmen are so skilful with the axe that it was 
done very neatly. The sashes for the windows and 
the planking for different parts of the house were got 
from a saw-mill some distance off, across the river, and 
my brother put in the glass. Of course there were a 
great many chinks between the logs, but these were 
filled up, as well as possible, with billets and chips of 
wood, the whole being finally coated and made air- 
tight with mortar. Thus the logs looked as if built up 
with lime, the great black trunks of the trees alternat- 



16 Our Log-house. 



cb 



ing with the grey belts between. The frame of the 
roof was made of round poles, flattened on the top, on 
which boards were put, and these again were covered 
with shingles — a kind of wooden slate made of split 
pine, which answers very well. The angles at the 
ends were filled up with logs fitted to the length, and 
fixed in their places by w r ooden pins driven through 
the roof-pole at each corner. On the whole house 
there were no nails used at all, except on the roof. 
Wooden pins, and an auger to make holes, made every- 
thing fast. Inside, it was an extraordinary place. The 
floor was paved with pine slabs, the outer planks cut from 
logs, with the round side down, and fixed by wooden 
pins to sleepers made of thin young trees, cut the right 
lengths. Overhead, a number of similar round poles, 
about the thickness of a man's leg, supported the floor 
of the upper story, which was to be my sisters' bed- 
room. They had planks, however, instead of boards, 
in honour of their sex, perhaps. They had to climb 
to this paradise by an extraordinary ladder* made with 
the never-failing axe and auger out of green, round 
wood. I used always to think of Robinson Crusoe 
getting into his fortification when I saw them going 
up. 

The chimney was a wonderful affair. It was large 
enough to let you walk up most of the way, and could 
hold, I can't tell how many logs, four or five feet long, 
for a fire. It was built of mud, and when whitewashed 
looked very well — at least we came to like it ; it was 



Hoiv it was Bin It. 27 

so clean and cheerful in the winter-time. But we had 
to pull it down some years after, and get one built of 
brick, as it was always getting out of repair. A par- 
tition was put up across the middle and then divided 
again, and this made two bed-rooms for my brothers, 
and left us our solitary room which was to serve for 
kitchen, dining-room, and drawing-room, the outer 
door opening into it. As to paint, it was out of the 
question, but we had lime for whitewash, and what with 
it and some newspapers which my brothers pasted up in 
their bed-rooms, and a few pictures we brought from 
home, we thought we were quite stylish. There was 
no house any better, at any rate, in the neighbourhood, 
and, I suppose, we judged by that. 

To keep out the rain and the cold — for rats were 
not known on the river for some years after — the 
whole of the bottom log outside had to be banked up 
after our arrival, the earth being dug up all round and 
thrown against it. The miserable shanties in which 
some settlers manage to live for a time are half buried 
by this process, and the very wretched ones built by 
labourers alongside public works while making, look 
more like natural mounds than human habitations. I 
have often thought it was a curious thing: to see how 
people, when in the same, or nearly the same, circum- 
stances, fall upon similar plans. Some of the Indians 
in America, for instance, used to sink a pit for a house 
and build it round with stones, putting a roof on the 
walls, which reached only a little above the ground j 



28 Our Loz-house. 

and antiquarians tell us that the early Scotch did the 
very same. Then Xenophon, long ago, and Curzon, 
in our day, tell us how they were often like to fall 
through the roof of the houses in Armenia into the 
middle of the family huddled up, with their oxen, 
beneath, their dwellings being burrowed into the side 
of a slope, and showing no signs of their presence 
from above. But our house was not like this, I am 
happy to say ; it was on the ground, not in it, and 
was very warm for Canada, when the wind did not 
come against the door, which was a very poor one, of 
inch-thick wood. The thickness of the logs kept out 
the cold wonderfully, though that is a very ambiguous 
word for a Canadian house, which would need to be 
made two logs thick to be w T arm without tremendous 
fires— at least, in the open unsheltered country. The 
houses made of w T hat they call ' clap-boards ' — that is, 
of narrow boards three-quarters of an inch thick, and 
lathed and plastered inside — are very much colder ; 
indeed, they are, in my opinion, awful, in any part of 
them wiiere a fire is not kept up all winter. 

One thing struck me very much, that locks and 
bolts seemed to be thought very useless things. Most 
of the doors had only wooden latches, made with an 
axe or a knife, and fastened at night by a wooden pin 
stuck in above the bar. We got water from the river 
close at hand ; a plank run out into the stream form- 
ing what they called i a wharf,' to let us get depth 
enough for our pitchers and pails. 



We (ret Oxen and Cows. 



29 



Besides the house, my brother had got a barn built 
not far from the house — of course a log one — on the 
piece clear of trees. It was about the size of the 
house, but the chinks between the logs were not so 
carefully filled up as in it. The squirrels, indeed, soon 
found this out, and were constantly running in and out 
when we had any grain in it. The upper part was to 
hold our hay, and half of the ground-floor was for our 
other crops, the cows having the remainder for their 
habitation. We bought a yoke of oxen — that is, two 
— a few days after our arrival, and we began with two 
cows, one of them a pretty fair milker, but the other, 
which had been bought at an extra price, w r as chosen 
by Robert for its fine red skin, and never had given 
much milk, and never did. The oxen, great unwieldy 
brutes, were pretty well broken ; but they were so dif- 
ferent from anything we had ever seen for ploughing 
or drawing a waggon, that we were all rather afraid of 
their horns at first, and not very fond of having any- 
thing to do with them. We had bought a plough and 
harrows, and I don't know what else, before coming up, 
and had brought a great many things besides from 
England, so that we had a pretty fair beginning in farm 
implements. An ox-waggon was very soon added to 
our purchases — a rough affair as could be. It was 
nothing but two planks for the bottom and one for each 
side, with short pieces at the ends, like the waggon- 
stage, on the road from Toronto — a long box on four 
wheels, about the height of a cart. The boards were 



30 Elephant and Buckeye. 

quite loose, to let them rise and fall in going over the 
roads when they were bad. The oxen- were fastened 
to this machine by a yoke, which is a heavy piece of 
hard wood, with a hollow at each end for the back of 
the necks of the oxen, and an iron ring in the middle, 
on the under side, to slip over a pin at the end of the 
waggon-pole, the oxen being secured to it by two thin 
collars of .a tough wood called hickory, which were 
just pieces bent to fit their deep necks, the ends being 
pushed up through two holes in the yokes at each side, 
and fastened by pins at the top. There was no har- 
ness of any kind, and no reins, a long wand serving to 
guide them. I used at first to think it was a very 
brave thing to put the yoke on them or take it off. 

The names of our two were Elephant and Buckeye, 
the one, as his name showed, a great creature, but as 
lazy as he was huge ; the other, a much nicer beast, 
somewhat smaller, and a far better w r orker. They 
were both red and white, and so patient and quiet that 
I used to be ashamed of myself when I got angry at 
them for their solemn slowness and stupidity. Had 
we been judges of cattle we might have got much 
better ones for the money they cost us ; bat my brother 
Andrew, who bought them, had never had any more 
to do with oxen till then than to help to eat them at 
dinner. However, we never bought anything more 
from the man who sold us them. 

Our first concern when we had got fairly into the 
house was to help to get the furniture and luggage 



Unpacking oitr Stores. 3 1 

brought from the wharf, two miles off, for we had to 
leave everything except our bedding there on landing. 
It was a great job to get all into the waggon, and then 
to open it after reaching the house. The wharf was 
a long wooden structure, built of logs driven into the 
shallow bed of the river for perhaps a hundred yards 
out to the deep water, and planked over. There was 
a broad place at the end to turn a waggon, but so 
much of it was heaped up with what they called ' cord- 
wood ' — that is, wood for fuel, cut four feet long — that 
it took some management to get this done. A man 
whom we had hired as servant of all work, at two 
pounds and his board and lodging a-month, brought 
down the waggon, and I shall never forget how we 
laughed at his shouting and roaring all the way to the 
oxen, as he walked at their heads with a long beach 
wand in his hand. He never ceased bellowing at 
them in rough, angry names, except to vary them by 
orders, such as Haw ! Gee ! Woa ! Hup ! which were 
very ridiculous when roared at their ears loud enough 
to have let them know his wishes if they had been on 
the other side of the river. Somehow, every one who 
drives oxen in Canada seems to have got into the same 
plan \ we ourselves, indeed, fell into it more than I 
would have thought after a time. When we had begun 
to move the luggage, what boxes on boxes had to be 
lifted ! We all lent a hand, but it was hard work. 
There was the piano, and the eight-clay clock, in a 
box like a coffin, and carpets, and a huge wardrobe, 



32 Unpacking our Stores. 

packed full of I don't know what, large enough to 
have done for a travelling show, and boxes of books, 
and crockery, and tables, and a great carpenter's chest, 
not to speak of barrels of oatmeal, and flour, and salt, 
and one of split peas. I think the books were the 
heaviest, except that awful wardrobe and the chest of 
drawers, which were all packed full of something. 
But they paid over and over for all the trouble and 
weight, proving the greatest possible blessing. If we 
had not brought them we would have turned half- 
savages, I suppose, for there were none to buy nearer 
than eighty or ninety miles, and, besides, we would 
not have had money to buy them. We had a whole 
set of Sir Walter Scott's charming stories, which did 
us a world of good, both by helping us to spend the 
winter evenings pleasantly, by the great amount of 
instruction in history and antiquarian lore they con- 
tained, and by showing my young sisters, especially, 
that all the world were not like the rude people about 
us. They got a taste for elegance and refinement from 
them that kept them ladies in their feelings while they 
had only the life of servants. 

When we had got all the things into the house, the 
next thing was to unpack them. A large pier-glass, 
which would have been very useful, but rather out of 
the way in such a house, was discovered to be shivered 
to fragments ; and some crockery had found the shak- 
ing on the journey too much for its powers of resist- 
ance. That horrid wardrobe, which had sprained our 



What some of our Neighbours brought 33 

backs to get on the waggon, would barely go in at the 
door, and we were very, much afraid at first, that, after 
bringing it more than three thousand miles, we should 
have to roof it over, cut holes in it, and make it a 
hen-house. It was all but too large, like the picture 
in the ' Vicar of Wakefield/ which would not go in at 
any door when it was brought home. There was not 
room for nearly all our furniture, and one end of my 
sisters' loft was packed like a broker's store-room with 
'part of it. My brother's being in America before had, 
however, saved us from bringing as outrageous things 
as some who afterwards settled in the neighbourhood. 
I remember one family who brought ever so many 
huge heavy grates, not knowing that there was no coal 
in Canada, and that they were useless. They w^ould, 
indeed, be able to get Ohio coal now, in the larger 
towns ; but there was none then anywhere. The only 
fuel burned all through the country parts, in fireplaces, 
is, still, great thick pieces of split logs, four feet long. 
One settler from Ireland had heard that there were a 
great many rattlesnakes in Canada; and as he had 
been a cavalry volunteer, and had the accoutrements, 
he brought a brass helmet, a regulation sabre, buck- 
skin breeches, and jack-boots with him, that he might 
march safely through the jungle which he supposed he 
should find on his route. The young clergyman who 
afterwards came out had a different fear. He thought 
there might be no houses for him to sleep in at nights, 
and brought out a hammock to swing up under the 

3 



34 What some of our Neighbours brought. 

trees. What he thought the people to whom he was 
to preach lived in, I don't know ; perhaps he fancied 
we cooked our dinners under the trees, and lived 
without houses, like the Indians. In some countries, 
hammocks are used in travelling through uninhabited 
places, on account of the poisonous insects on the 
ground and the thickness of the vegetation ; but in 
Canada such a thing is never heard of, houses being 
always within reach in the parts at all settled ; and 
travellers sleep on the ground when beyond the limits 
of civilization. But to sleep in the open air at all 
makes one such a figure before morning with mosquito- 
bites, that nobody would try it a second time, if he 
could help it. I was once on a journey up Lake 
Huron, of which I shall speak by and by, where we 
had to sleep a night on the ground, and, what with 
ants running over us, and with the mosquitoes, we had 
a most wretched time of it. A friend who was with 
me had his nose so bitten that it was thicker above than 
below, and looked exactly as if it had been turned up- 
side down in the dark. 

It took us some time to get everything fairly in 
order, but it was all done after a while. We were all in 
good health \ everything before us was new ; and the 
weather, though very warm, was often delightful in the 
evenings. Through the day it was sometimes very 
oppressive, and we had hot nights now and then that 
were still worse. A sheet seemed as heavy as if it had 
been a pair of blankets, and when we were sure the 



Hot Days, 35 

door was fast, we were glad to throw even it aside. 
We always took a long rest at noon till the sun got 
somewhat cooler, but the heat was bad enough even 
in the shade. I have known it pretty nearly, if not 
quite, ioo° some days in the house. I remember hear- 
ing some old gentlemen once talking about it, and 
telling each other how they did to escape it : the one 
declared that the coolest part of the house was below 
the bed, and the other, a very stout clergyman, said 
he found the only spot for study was in the cellar. 

Captain W used to assert that it was often as hot 

in Canada as in the West Indies. 

My sisters never went with so little clothing before ; 
and, indeed, it was astonishing how their circumference 
collapsed under the influence of the sun. As to us, 
we thought only of coolness. Coarse straw hats, with 
broad brims, costing about eightpence apiece, with a 
handkerchief in the crown to keep the heat off the 
head ; a shirt of blue cotton, wide trowsers of dark 
printed calico, or, indeed, of anything thin, and boots, 
composed our dress. But this was elaborate, compared 
with that adopted by a gentleman who was leading a 
bachelor life back in the bush some distance from us. 
A friend went to see him one day, and found him fry- 
ing some bacon on a fire below a tree before his door ; 
— a potato-pot hanging by a chain over part of it, from 
a bough — his only dress being a shirt, boots, a hat, and 
a belt round his waist, with a knife in it. He had not 
thought of any one penetrating to his wilderness 



36 Bush Costumes. 

habitation, and laughed as heartily at being caught 
in such a plight as my friend did at catching him. For 
my part, I thought I should be cooler still if I turned 
up my shirt-sleeve ; but my arms got forthwith so tanned 
and freckled, that even yet they are more useful than 
beautiful. One day there chanced to be a torn place on 
my shoulder, which I did not notice on going out. I 
thought, after a time, that it was very hot, but took it 
for granted it could not be helped. When I came in 
at dinner, however, I was by no means agreeably 
surprised when my sister Margaret called out to me, 
' George, there's a great blister on your shoulder/ 
which sure enough there was. I took care to have 
always a whole shirt after that. 

We had hardly been a month on the river when we 
heard that a man, fresh from England, who had been 
at work for a neighbour, came into the house one after- 
noon, saying he had a headache, and died, poor fellow, 
in less than an hour. He had had a sun-stroke. Some- 
times those who are thus seized fall down at once in a fit 
of apoplexy, as was the case with Sir Charles Napier 
in Scinde. I knew a singular instance of what the sun 
sometimes does, in the case of a young man, a plumber 
by trade, who had been working on a roof in one of 
the towns on a hot day. He was struck down in an 
instant, and was only saved from death by a fellow- 
workman. For a time he lost his reason, but that 
gradually came back. He lost the power of every part 
of his body, however, except his head, nothing remain- 



Sim-strokes. 37 

ing alive, you may say, but that. He could move or 
control his eyes, mouth, and neck, but that was all. He 
had been a strong man, but he wasted away till his legs 
and arms were not thicker than a child's. Yet he got 
much better eventually, after being bedridden for 
[several years, and when I last was at his house, could 
creep about on two crutches. 

I used to pity my sisters, who had to work over the 
fire, cooking for us. It was bad enough for girls who 
had just left a fashionable school in England, and were 
quite young yet, to do work which hitherto they had 
always had done for them, but to have to stoop over a 
fire in scorching hot weather must have been very ex- 
hausting. They had to bake in a large iron pot, set 
upon embers, and covered with them over the lid \ and 
the dinner had to be cooked on the logs in the kitchen 
fireplace, until we thought of setting up a contrivance 
made by laying a stout stick on two upright forked 
ones, driven into the ground at each end of a fire 
kindled outside, and hanging the pots from it. While 
I think of it, what a source of annoyance the cooking 
on the logs in the fireplace was before we got a crane ! 
I remember we once had a large brass panfull of rasp- 
berry jam, nicely poised, as we thought, on the burn- 
ing logs, and just ready to be lifted off, when, lo ! some 
of the firewood below gave way and down it went into 
the ashes ! Baking was a hard art to learn. What 
bread we had to eat at first ! We used to quote Hood's 
lines — 



38 Going to Mill. 

1 Who has not heard of home-made bread — 
That heavy compound of putty and lead ? ' 

But practice, and a few lessons from a neighbour's 
wife, made my sisters quite expert at it. We had 
some trouble in getting flour, however, after our first 
stock ran out. The mill was five miles off, and, as we 
had only oxen, it was a tedious job getting to it and 
back again. One of my brothers used to set off at five 
in the morning, with his breakfast over, and was not 
back again till nine or ten at night — that is, after we 
had wheat of our own. It had to be ground while he 
waited. But it was not all lost time, for the shoe- 
maker's was near the mill, and we always made the 
same journey do for both. In winter we were some- 
times badly off when our flour ran short. On getting 
to the mill, we, at times, found the wheel frozen hard, 
and that the miller had no flour of his own to sell. I 
have known us for a fortnight having to use potatoes 
instead of bread, when our neighbours happened to be 
as ill-provided as we, and could not lend us a l baking/ 
But baking was not all that was to be done in a 
house like ours, with so many men in it. No servants 
could be had, the girls round, even when their fathers 
had been labourers in England, were quite above going 
out to service, so that my sisters had their hands full. 
We tried to help them as much as we could, bringing 
in the wood for the fire, and carrying all the water from 
the river. Indeed, I used to think it almost a pleasure 
to fetch the water, the river was so beautifully clear. 



Otcr part of the Housework. 39 

Never was crystal more transparent. I was wont to 
idle as well as work while thus employed, looking at 
the beautiful stones and pebbles that lay at the bottom, 
far beyond the end of the plank that served for our 
1 wharf/ 



4© 




CHAPTER III. 

Clearing the land — David's bragging, and the end of it — Burning 
the log-heaps — Our logging bee — What prejudice can do — Our 
fences and crops nearly burned — The woods on fire — Building 
a snake-fence — ' Shingle ' pigs give us sore trouble — ' Breachy ' 
horses and cattle. 

HE first thing that had to be done with the 
land was to make a farm of it, by cutting 
down and burning as many trees as we 
could before the end of August, to have 
some room for sowing wheat in the first or second week 
of September. It was now well on in June, so that we 
had very little time. However, by hiring two men to 
chop (we didn't board or lodge them) and setting our 
other hired men to help, and with the addition of what 
my brothers Robert and David could do, we expected 
to get a tolerably-sized field ready. Henry and I were 
too young to be of much use ; Henry, the elder, being 
only about fifteen. As to Andrew, he could not bear 
such work, and paid one of the men to work for him. 
Yet both he and we had all quite enough to do, in the 
lighter parts of the business. We had got axes in 
Toronto, and our man fitted them into the crooked 
handles which they use in Canada. A British axe, 



Clearing the Land. 41 

with a long, thin blade, only set the men a laughing ; 
and, indeed, it chanced to be a very poor affair ; for one 
day the whole face of it flew off as Robert was making 
a furious cut with it at a thistle. The Canadian axes 
were shaped like wedges, and it was wonderful to see 
how the men made the chips fly out of a tree with them. 
We got up in the morning with the sun, and. went out 
to work till breakfast, the men whacking away with all 
their might ; Nisbet, our own man, as we called him, 
snorting at every stroke, as if that helped him, and my 
two elder brothers using their axes as well as they 
could. We, younger hands, had, for our part, to lop 
off the branches when the trees were felled. My 
brothers soon got to be very fair choppers, and could 
finish a pretty thick tree sooner than you would sup- 
pose. But it was hard work, for some of the trees 
were very large. One in particular, an elm, which the 
two men attacked at the same time, was so broad 
across the stump, after it was cut down, that Nisbet, 
who was a fair-sized man, when he lay down across it, 
with his head at the edge on one side, did not reach 
with his feet to the other. But, thicker or thinner, all 
came down as we advanced. The plan was to make, 
first, a slanting stroke, and, then, another, straight in, 
to cut off the chip thus made ; thus gradually reaching 
the middle, leaving a smooth, flat stump about three 
feet high underneath, and a slope inwards above. The 
one side done, they began the same process with the 
other, hacking away chip after chip from the butt, till 



42 Clearing the Land. 

there was not enough left to support the mass above. 
Then came the signal of the approaching fall by a loud 
crack of the thin strip that was left uncut ; on hear- 
ing which, we looked up to see which way the 
huge shaft was coming, and would take to our 
heels out of its reach, if it threatened to fall in our 
direction. It is wonderful, however, how exactly a 
skilful chopper can determine beforehand how a tree 
shall come down. They sometimes manage, indeed, 
to aim one so fairly at a smaller one, close at hand, as 
to send it, also, to the ground with the blow. Accidents 
rarely happen, though, sometimes, a poor man runs the 
wrong way and gets killed. What a noise the great 
monarchs of the forest made as they thundered down ! 
It was like firing off a great cannon • and right glad we 
were when we had a good many such artillery to fire 
off in a day. But it was often dreadfully hot work, 
and my brothers seemed as if they should never drink 
enough. I used to bring them a small pailful of water 
at a time, and put it on the shady side of a stump, 
covering it over with some green thing besides, to keep 
it cool. The cows and oxen seemed to take as much 
pleasure as ourselves in our progress, for no sooner 
was a tree down than they would be among its branches, 
munching off the tender ends as if they were great 
delicacies in their eyes. It was harder to keep them 
out of harm's way than ourselves, and many a time I 
was half afraid a tree would be down on me before 
I got them out of danger. ^ Indeed, we had one loss, 



Davids Bragging, and the end of it. 43 

though only a small one. We had been talking over- 
night about cattle being killed, and David, who was 
always a great brag, had told us that ' he thought 
it all stupidity; he didn't know how people killed 
beasts • he could chop for years and never hurt 
anything, if there were ever so many cattle about. 
Next morning, however, before breakfast, we were all 
hard at work, and the oxen and cows were busy with 
the twigs as usual, when a fine little calf we had got 
with one of the cows wandered off in David's direction, 
just as a tree he was at was about to fall; and, presently, 
while he was all excitement about its going the right 
way for himself, it was down smash on the poor calf, 
which was, of course, gone in a moment. We were 
sorry for the unfortunate little creature, but we could 
not help laughing amidst all at the face David put on. 
1 It was very singular — very. He couldn't account for 
it ; how could he think a calf would leave its mother ? ' 
But he said no more about the stupidity of people who 
killed oxen or cows while chopping. 

Working hard every day, it was surprising what a 
piece we soon felled. When we had got as much down 
as we thought we could clear off in time for the wheat, 
we gave the rest a respite for a while, and set to getting 
rid of those we had already overthrown. The straightest 
of them were selected for rails, with which to fence our 
intended field ; all the others were to be remorselessly 
burned, stock and branch. The first step towards this 
had been taken already, by us lads having cut off the 



44 Burning the Log-heaps. 

branches from each tree as it was felled, and heaped 
them together in different spots. The trunks of the 
trees had next to be cut into pieces about ten feet long, 
those intended for rails being left somewhat longer. I 
wonder how often the axes rose and fell during these 
weeks. Even my brothers began to be able to use 
them more skilfully, their stumps beginning to look 
smooth and clean cut, instead of being hacked in a 
thousand ridges, as at first. How an English carpenter's 
heart would have grieved over the destruction of so 
much splendid wood ! The finest black walnut, and 
oak, and maple, was slashed at from morning to night, 
with no thought on our parts but to get it out of the 
way as quickly as possible. 

Everything was, at last, ready for the grand finishing 
act, but that required the help of some neighbours, so 
that we had to call another ' bee.' The logs had to be 
rolled together and piled up for burning, which would 
have taken us too long if left to ourselves alone. We 
got a -good woman from a farm not far off to come in 
to help my sisters in their preparations, for there is. 
always a great deal of cooking on these occasions. 
Salt beef and salt pork were to form the centre dishes 
at the dinner, but there was to be a great array of pies 
and tarts, for which we bought part of the fruit across 
the river, and, of the rest, there were pumpkins, which 
we got from settlers near at hand, and we had plums 
enough, very good though wild, from trees in our own 
bush. Tea, with cream to every one's taste, formed 



Our Logging Bee. 45 

the principal beverage, though the most of the men 
wanted to get whisky besides. But it almost always 
leads to drunkenness and fighting, so that we did with- 
out it. On the day appointed there was a very good 
muster — perhaps twenty men altogether. They came 
immediately after breakfast, and we took care to be 
ready for them. 

Our oxen were brought to the ground with their 
yoke on, and a long chain fastened to the ring in it, 
and two of the men brought each another yoke, so 
that we were noisy enough and had plenty of excite- 
ment. Two men got it as their task to drive, others 
fixed the chains round the logs, and drew them as 
near each other as possible, in lots of about six or 
seven, and the rest had to lift each lot, one log on 
another, into piles. Henry and I were set to gather 
the loose brush that was left, and throw it on the top 
of the heaps, and thrust the dry rotten sticks lying 
about into the holes between the logs, to help them 
to burn. It was astonishing to see how the oxen 
walked away with their loads. Standing as quiet as 
if they could not move, except when their tails were 
sent to do duty on some troublesome flies, their* faces 
as solemnly stupid as possible, the first shout of the 
driver made them lean instantly against their yoke 
in a steady pull, which moved almost any log to which 
they might be chained. Horses would have jumped 
and tugged, and the log would have stuck where it 
was, but the solid strain of the oxen, their two heads 



46 What Prejudice can do. 

often together, and their bodies far apart, was irre- 
sistible. Off they walked with huge cuts of trees, ten 
feet long, as if they had been trifles. It was a wonder 
how they could stand dragging such heavy weights 
over the rough ground, with nothing but the thin 
wooden collar round their necks, against which to 
press. A horse needs a padded collar, but an ox 
doesn't seem to suffer from the want of it. In Nova 
Scotia, which I afterwards visited, and also in Lower 
Canada, oxen are harnessed by the horns, and you 
are only laughed at if you say that it seems cruel. I 
believe if they were yoked by the tail in any country, 
the people who used them in that way would stand 
up for its superiority to any other. Prejudice is a 
wonderful thing for blinding men. I have heard of a 
gentleman in the East Indies, who felt for the labourers 
having to carry the earth from some public work they 
were digging in baskets, on their shoulders, and got a 
number of wheelbarrows made for them, showing them 
himself how to use them, and how much better they 
were than their own plan. But, next morning, when 
he came to see how they were liking the new system, 
what was his astonishment to find that they had 
turned the barrows also into baskets, carrying them on 
their shoulders, with a man at each handle and one at 
the wheel I 

With a due rest for dinner and supper, an extra 
time being taken in the middle of the day to escape 
the heat, and with a wonderful consumption of eatables, 



Burning the Logs. 47 

including beef and pork, pies, tarts, pickles, puddings, 
cakes, tea, and other things, at each meal, we got 
through the day to the satisfaction of all, and had now 
only to get everything burned off. 

The next day it was slightly windy, which was in 
our favour, and, still better, the wind was blowing 
away from our house and barn. The burning was 
as thorough as we could have desired, but it was hot 
work. We brought some wood embers from the house, 
and laid them on the top of one of the logs, on the 
side next the wind. Then we piled chips and splinters 
on them, which were soon in flames, and from them 
there soon was a grand blaze of the whole pile. Thus 
we went on, from one to another, until they were 
all a-fire. But the rolling the pieces together as they 
burned away, and the stuffing odd ends into the hol- 
lows to keep up the flame, was wild work. We ran 
about all day, gathering up every bit of branch or dead 
wood we could find, to get a clean sweep made of 
everything at once. What we were like when all was 
over, with our black faces and hands, and smudged 
shirts and trowsers, may be easily fancied. But, after 
all, one day was not enough to get rid of the whole. 
It was days before we got everything burned, the last 
pile being made up of the fragments of all the rest 
that still remained. 

We were fortunate in not having anything set on 
fire which we wished to keep from being burned. I 
have known of many cases where dried leaves and 



48 Our Fences and Crops nearly bunted. 

pieces of dead wood, and the thick roots of the grass, 
and the coat of vegetable matter always found in the 
soil of the forest, kindled, in spite of every effort to 
prevent it, the fire running along, far and near, in the 
ground, and setting everything it reached in a blazje. 
I remember, some years after our arrival, Henry was 
one day going some distance, and thought it would be 
as well, before he started, to fire some brush heaps 
that were standing in a field that was being cleared, 
quite a distance back, along the side road ; but he 
had hardly done so and set off, than my sisters, Mar- 
garet and Eliza, who were alone in the house, noticed 
that the fire had caught the ground, and was making 
for the strip at the side of the road, in the direction of 
the wheat field. It was leaping from one thing to 
another, as the wind carried it, and had already put 
the long fence next it, running along six or seven acres, 
in great danger. If it had once kindled that, it might 
have swept on towards -the house and barn and burned 
up everything we 'had ; but my sisters were too 
thorough Canadians by this time to let it have its own 
way. Off the two set to the burning bank, and began 
to take down the fence rail by rail, and carry each 
across the road, where the fire could not reach them. 
Fortunately there was only stubble in the field, and 
the black ploughed earth checked the fire, but it kept 
running along the road, breaking out afresh after they 
had thought it was done, and keeping them fighting 
with the rails the whole day, until Henry came back 



The Woods 07i Fire. 49 

at night. A man who passed in a waggon when they 
were in the worst of their trouble never offered them 
any help, poor girls, but drove on, ' guessing' they 
' had a pretty tight job thar.' Thanks to their activity 
there was no mischief done, except the taking down 
the fence ; but it was a wonder it did not hurt my 
sisters, as the rails are so heavy that men never lift 
more than one at a time, or very seldom. 

Another instance occurred about the same time, but 
on a larger scale. One day, on looking east from the 
house, we noticed, about two miles off, great clouds of 
smoke rising from the woods, and of course we were 
instantly off to see what it was. We found that 
ground-fire had got into a piece of the forest which 
we called the ' Windfall,' a broad belt of huge pine trees, 
which had been thrown down by some terrible whirl- 
wind, I don't know how long before. Some of them 
had already mouldered in parts ; others had been 
charred by some former burning, and would have 
lasted for almost any length of time. They lay on 
each other in the wildest and thickest confusion, 
making a barricade that would have kept back an 
army of giants, and reaching for miles, their great 
branches rising in thousands, black and naked, into 
the air. The fire had fairly caught them, and was 
leaping and crackling from limb to limb and sending 
up volumes of the densest smoke. It was a terrible 
sight to see, and no one could tell how far it would 
extend. We were afraid it would spread to the forest 
4 



50 The Woods on Fire. 

at each side, and it did catch many of the trees next 
it, fixing on them, sometimes at the ground, sometimes 
up among the branches, while, sometimes, the first 
indication of their being on fire would be by the dead 
part at the very top, nearly a hundred feet, I should 
think, in some cases, from the earth, flaming out like 
a star. At night the sight was grand in the extreme 
— the blazing mass of prostrate trees in the Windfall, 
and, at its edges, tongues of flame, running up the 
huge trunks, or breaking out here and there on their 
.sides. At one place a field came very near the path 
of the conflagration, and it was feared that, though the 
trees did not come close enough to set the fence on 
fire by contact, it might be kindled by the burning 
twigs and inflammable matter that covered the ground. 
A plough was therefore brought, and several broad 
furrows were run outside, that the ground-fire might 
thus be stopped. The plan was effectual, and the 
fence remained untouched ; but the fire among the 
dead pines spread day after day, till it had burned up 
everything before it, to an opening in the forest on 
the other side, where it at last died out. 

As soon as the log-piles had been fairly disposed of, 
we had, for our next job, to get the rails put up round 
the field thus cleared. They were made, from the logs 
that had been saved for the purpose, by one of the 
choppers, whom we retained. First s of all, he sank his 
axe into one end of the log, and then he put an iron 
or wooden wedge into the cleft he had made, and drove 



Building a Snake-fence. 5 1 

it home with a mallet. Then, into the crack made by 
the first wedge, he put a second, and that made it split 
so far down that only another was generally needed to 
send it in two. The same process was gone through 
with the halves, and then with the parts, until the 
whole log lay spilt into pieces, varying in thickness 
from that of a man's leg to as much again, as they were 
wanted light or heavy. You must remember that they 
were twelve feet long. To make them into a fence, 
you laid a line of them down on the ground in a zigzag, 
like a row of very broad V's, the end of the second 
resting on that of the first, and so on, round the 
corners, till you came to within the length of a rail from 
where you started. The vacant space was to be the 
entrance to the field. Then five or six more were laid, 
one on another, all round, in the same way — or rather, 
were put up in short, complete portions, till all were 
in their places. The ends, at each side of the entrance, 
were next lifted and laid on pins put between two 
upright posts at each side. To make a gate, we had a 
second set of posts, with pins close to the others, and 
on these pins rails were laid which could be taken out 
when wanted, and served very well for a gate, but we 
boys almost always went over the fence rather than go 
round it. To keep all the rails in their places we had to 
put up what they called ' stakes ' at each angle — that is, 
we had to take shorter rails, sharpened a little at the 
end, and push one hard into the ground on each side 
of the fence, at every overlapping of the ends of the 



52 ' Shingle Pigs" give us trouble. 

rails, leaning them firmly against the top rail, so that they 
crossed each other above. The last thing was to lay a 
light rail all round into the crosses thus made, so as to 
\ lock ' them, and to make the whole so high that no 
beast could get over it. 

We used to laugh about what we were told of the 
pigs and cattle and horses getting through and over 
fences ; but we soon found out that it was no laughing 
matter. The pigs were our first enemies, for, though 
we had made the lowest four rails very close, as we 
thought, to keep them out, we found we had not quite 
succeeded. There were some of a horrible breed, 
which they called the ' shingle pig,' as thin as a slate, 
with long snouts, long coarse bristles, long legs, and a 
belly like a greyhound — creatures about as different 
from an English pig as can be imagined. They could 
run like a horse, nothing would fatten them, and they 
could squeeze themselves sideways through an opening 
where you would have thought they could never have 
got in. If any hollow in the ground gave them the 
chance of getting below the rails, they were sure to find 
it out, and the first thing you would see, perhaps, would 
be a great gaunt skeleton of a sow, with six or eight 
little ones, rooting away in the heart of your field. With 
old fences they made short work, for if there were a 
piece low and ricketty they would fairly push it over 
with their horrid long noses, and enter with a triumphant 
grunt. Although they might have spared our feelings, 
and left our first little field alone, they did not, but 



* Shingle Pigs ' give us sore trouble. 53 

never rested snuffing round the fence, till they found 
out a place or two below it that had not been closely 
enough staked, through which they squeezed them- 
selves almost every day, until we found out where they 
were and stopped them up. The brutes were so cun- 
ning that they would never go in before you, but would 
stand looking round the end of the fence with their 
wicked eyes till you were gone. Robert thought at 
first he could take revenge on them and whip them out 
of such annoying habits, and whenever the cry was 
given that ' the pigs were in,' if he were within reach 
he would rush for the whip, and over the fence, to give 
them the weight of it. But they were better at running 
than he was, and though he cut off the corners to try to 
head them, I don't know that, in all the times he ran 
himself out of breath, he ever did more than make 
them wonder what his intention could be in giving 
them such dreadful chases. We learned to be wiser 
after a time, and by keeping down our ill nature and 
driving them gently found they would make for the 
place where they got in, and, by going out at it, discover 
it to us. I only once saw a pig run down, and it 
wasn't a ' shingle ' one. Neither Robert, nor any of 
us — for we were all, by his orders, tearing after it in 
different directions — could come near it ; but a man 
we had at the time started off like an arrow in pursuit, 
and very soon had it by the hind leg, lifting it by 
which, the same instant, to poor piggy's great astonish- 
ment, he sent it with a great heave over the fence, 



54 'Breachy ' Horses and Cattle. 

down on the grass outside. It was a small one, of 
course, else he could not have done it. A gentleman 
some miles above us used to be terribly annoyed by all 
the pigs of the neighbourhood, as he declared, getting 
round the end of his fence which ran into the river, 
and thought he would cure matters by running it out a 
rail farther. But they were not to be beaten, and 
would come to the outside, and swim round his fancied 
protection. He had to add a third length of rail before 
he stopped them, and it succeeded only by the speed 
of the current being too great for them to stem. 

But pigs were not the only nuisance. Horses and 
cattle were sometimes a dreadful trouble. A ' breachy ' 
horse, or ox, or cow — that is, one given to leap fences 
or break them down — is sure to lead all the others in 
the neighbourhood into all kinds of mischief. The 
gentleman who was so worried by the nautical powers 
of the pigs, used to be half distracted by a black mare 
which ran loose in his neighbourhood, and led the way 
into his fields to a whole troop of horses, which, but 
for her, would have been harmless enough. If a fence 
were weak she would shove it over ; or if firm, unless 
it were veiy high indeed, she w T ould leap over it, gener- 
ally knocking off rails enough in doing so to let the 
others in. She took a fancy to a fine field of Indian 
corn he had a little way from his house, and night 
after night, when he had fairly got into bed, he would 
hear her crashing over the fence into it, followed by 
all the rest. Of course he had to get up and dress 



' Breachy' Horses and Cattle. $$ 

himself, and then, after running about half an hour, 
through dewy corn as high as his head, to get them 
out again, he had to begin in the middle of the night 
to rebuild his broken rampart. Only think of this, re- 
peated night after night. I used to laugh at his nine 
or ten feet high fence, which I had to climb every time 
I went along the river -side to see him, but he always 
put me off by saying — ' Ah, you haven't a black mare 
down your way/ And I am happy to say we had not. 
The cattle were no less accomplished in all forms of 
field-breaking villany than the pigs and horses. We 
had one brute of a cow, sometime after we came, that 
used deliberately to hook off the rails with her horns, 
until they were low enough to let her get her forelegs 
over, and then she leaned heavily on the rest until 
they gave way before her, after which she would boldly 
march in. She was an excellent milker, so that we did 
all we could to cure her — sticking a board on her 
horns, and hanging another over her eyes — but she had 
a decided taste for fence-breaking, and we had at last 
to sentence her to death, and take our revenge by eat- 
ing her up through the winter, after she had been fat- 
tened. 



56 




CHAPTER IV. 

We begin our preparations for sowing — Gadflies — Mosquitoes — 
Harrowing experiences — A huge liy — Sandflies — The poison 
of insects and serpents — Winter wheat — The wonders of plant- 
life — Our first * sport ' — Woodpeckers — i Chitmunks ' — The 
blue jay — The blue bird — The flight of birds. 

|HEN we had got our piece of ground all 
cleared, except the great ugly stumps, 
and had got our fence up, our next job 
was to get everything ready for sowing. 
First of all the ashes had to be scattered, a process 
that liberally dusted our clothes and faces. Then we 
brought up the oxen and fastened them by their chain 
to the sharp end of a three-cornered harrow, and with 
this we had to scratch the soil, as if just to call its 
attention to what we wished at its hand. It was the 
most solemnly slow work I ever saw, to get over the 
ground with our yoke — solemn to all but the driver, 
but to him the very reverse. The shouting and yell- 
ing on his part never stopped, as he had to get them 
round this stump and clear of that one. But, if you 
looked only at the oxen you forgot the noise in watch- 
ing whether they moved at all or not. Elephant would 



Gadflies. 5 7 

lift his great leg into the air and keep it motionless for 
a time, as if he were thinking whether he should ever 
set it down again, and, of course, Buckeye could not 
get on faster than his mate. I tried the harrowing a 
little, but I confess I didn't like it. We were perse- 
cuted by the gadflies, which lighted on the poor oxen 
and kept them in constant excitement, as, indeed, they 
well might. Wherever they get a chance they pierce 
the skin on the back with a sharp tube, which shuts 
up and draws out like a telescope, at the end of their 
bodies, protruding an egg through it into the creature 
attacked, and this egg, when hatched, produces a grub 
which makes a sore lump round it and lives in it, till 
it has attained its full size, when it comes out, lets it- 
self fall to the ground and burrows in it, reappearing 
after a time as a winged gadfly to torment other cattle. 
Then there were the long tough roots running in every 
direction round the stumps, and catching the teeth of 
the harrow every little while, giving the necks of the 
poor oxen uncommon jerks, and needing the harrow 
to be lifted over them each time. There was another 
trouble also, in the shape of the mosquitoes, which 
worried driver and oxen alike. They are tiny crea- 
tures, but they are nevertheless a great nuisance. In 
the woods in summer, or near them, or, indeed, wher- 
ever there is stagnant water, they are sure to sound 
their 'airy trump/ The wonderful quickness of the 
vibration of their wings makes a singing noise, which 
proclaims at once the presence of even a single tor- 



5 8 Mosquitoes. 

mentor. They rise in clouds from every pool, and 
even from the rain-water barrels kept near houses, 
where they may be seen in myriads, in their first shape 
after leaving the egg, as little black creatures with 
large heads, and tails perpetually in motion, sculling 
themselves with great speed hither and thither, but 
always tail foremost. A single night is sufficient to 
change them from this state, and send them out as 
full-blown mosquitoes, so that even if there be not one 
in your room on going to bed, you may have the plea- 
sure of hearing several before morning, if you are in 
the habit of indulging in the luxury of washing in rain- 
water, or, worse still, to find your nose, and cheeks, or 
hands, ornamented by itchy lumps, which show that 
the enemy has been at you, after all, while you slept. 
In Canada they are not half an inch long, and, until 
distended with blood, are so thin as to be nearly in- 
visible. Their instrument of torture is a delicate 
sucker, sticking down from the head and looking very 
like a glass thread, the end of it furnished with sharp 
edges which cut the skin. I have sometimes let one 
take its will of the back of my hand, just to watch it. 
Down it comes, almost teo light to be felt, then out 
goes the lancet, its sheath serving for a support by 
bending up on the surface of the skin in proportion as 
the sucker sinks. A sharp prick and the little vampire 
is drinking your blood. A minute, and his thm, 
shrivelled body begins to get fuller, until, very soon, 
he is three times the mosquito he was when he began, 



Mosquitoes. 59 

and is quite red with his surfeit shining through his 
sides. But, though he is done you are not, for some 
poisonous secretion is instilled into the puncture, 
which causes pain, inflammation, and swelling, long 
after he is gone. We had a little smooth-haired 
terrier which seemed to please their taste almost as 
much as we ourselves did. When it got into the 
woods, they would settle on the poor brute, in spite 
of all its efforts, till it was almost black with them. 
Horses and oxen get no rest from their attacks, and 
between them and the horse-flies I have seen the sides 
of the poor things running with blood. ' Dey say 
ebery ting has some use,' said a negro to me one day ; 
1 1 wonder what de mosqueeter's good for ? ' So do I. 
A clergyman who once visited us declared that he 
thought they and all such pests were part of what is 
meant in the Bible by the power of the devil ; but 
whether he was right or not is beyond me to settle. 
Perhaps they keep off fevers from animals by bleeding 
them as they do. But you know what Socrates said, 
that it was the highest attainment of wisdom to feel 
that we know nothing, so that, even if we can't tell 
why they are there, we may be sure, that, if we knew 
as much as we might, we should find that they served 
some wise purpose. At the same time I have often 
been right glad to think that the little nuisances must 
surely have short commons in the unsettled districts, 
where there are no people nor cattle to torment. 
The harrowing was also my first special introduction 



60 A huge Fly. 

to the horse-flies — great horrid creatures that they 
are. They fastened on the oxen at every part, and 
stuck the five knives with which their proboscis is 
armed, deep into the flesh. They are as large as 
honey-bees, so that you may judge how much they 
torment their victims. I have seen them make a 
horse's flanks red with the blood from their bites. 
They were too numerous to be driven off by the long 
tails of either oxen or horses, and, to tell the truth, I 
was half afraid to come near them lest they should 
take a fancy to myself. It is common in travelling to 
put leafy branches of maple or some other tree over 
the horses' ears and head to protect them as far as 
possible. 

The largest fly I ever saw lighted on the fence close 
to me, about this time. We had been frightened by 
stories of things as big as your thumb, that soused 
down on you before you knew it, but I never, before 
or since, saw such a giant of a fly as this fellow. It 
was just like a house-fly magnified a great many times, 
how many I should not like to say. I took to my 
heels in a moment for fear of instant death, and saw 
no more of it. Whether it would have bitten me or 
not I cannot tell, but I was not at all inclined to try 
the experiment. 

All this time we have left the oxen pulling away at 
the harrow, but we must leave them a minute or two 
longer till we get done with all the flies at once. There 
is a little black speck called the sand-fly, which many 



Sand-flics. 61 

think even worse than the mosquito. It comes in 
clouds, and is too small to ward off, and its bite causes 
acute pain for hours after. But, notwithstanding gad- 
flies, mosquitoes, horse-flies, and this last pest, the 
sand-fly, we were better off than the South American 
Indians of whom Humboldt speaks, who have to hide 
all night three or four inches deep in the sand to keep 
themselves from mosquitoes as large as bluebottles ; 
and our cattle had nothing to contend with like such 
a fly as the tzetse, which, Dr Livingstone tells us, is 
found in swarms on the South African rivers, a bite of 
which is certain death to any horse or ox. 

How curious it is, by the way, that any poison 
should be so powerful that the quantity left by the 
bite of a fly should be able to kill a great strong horse 
or an ox ; and how very wonderful it is, moreover, 
that the fly's body should secrete such a frightful 
poison, and that it should carry it about in it without 
itself suffering any harm ! Dr Buckland, of the Life 
Guards, was once poisoned by some of the venom of 
a cobra di capelio, a kind of serpent, getting below 
his nail, into a scratch he had given himself with a 
knife he had used in skinning a rat, which the serpent 
had killed. And yet the serpent itself could have 
whole glands full of it, without getting any hurt. But 
if the cobra were to bite its own body it would die at 
once. The scorpion can and does sting itself to 
death. 

When we had got our field harrowed over twice or 



62 Winter Wheat. 

thrice, till every part of it had been well scratched up, 
and the ashes well mixed with the soil, our next step 
was to sow it, after which came another harrowing, 
and then we had only to wait till the harvest next July, 
hoping we might be favoured with a good crop. That 
a blade so slight as that of young wheat should be 
able to stand the cold of the Canadian winter has 
always seemed to me a great wonder. It grows up the 
first year just like grass, and might be mistaken for it 
even in the beginning of the following spring. The 
snow which generally covers it during the long cold 
season is a great protection to it, but it survives even 
when it has been bare for long intervals together, though 
never I believe, so strong, after such hardships suffered 
In its infancy. The snow not only protects but, in its 
melting, nourishes, the young plant, so that not to 
have a good depth of it is a double evil. But, snow 
or not snow, the soil is almost always frozen like a 
rock, and yet the tender green blades live through it 
all, unless some thaw during winter expose the roots, 
and a subsequent frost seize them, in which case the 
plant dies. Large patches in many fields are thus 
destroyed in years when the snow is not deep enough. 
What survives must have suspended its life while the 
earth in which it grows is frozen. Yet, after being 
thus asleep for months — indeed, more than asleep, 
for every process of life must be stopped, the first 
breath of spring brings back its vigour, and it wakes 
as if it had been growing all the time. How wonder- 



The Wonders of Plant- life. 63 

ful are even the common facts of nature ! The life 
of plants I have always thought very much so. Our 
life perishes if it be stopped for a very short time, but 
the beautiful robe of flowers and verdure with which 
the world is adorned is well nigh indestructible. 
Most of you know the story of Pope's weeping willow : 
the poet had received a present of a basket of figs 
from the Levant, and when opening it, discovered 
that part of the twigs of which it was made were 
already budding, from some moisture that had 
reached them, and this led him to plant one, which, 
when it had grown, became the stock whence all the 
Babylonian willows in England have come. Then 
we are told that seeds gathered from beneath the 
ashes at Pompeii, after being buried for eighteen hun- 
dred years, have grown on being brought once more 
to the light, and it has often been found that others 
brought up from the bottom of wells, when they 
were being dug, or from beneath accumulations of 
sand, of unknown age, have only to be sown near the 
surface to commence instantly to grow. It is said 
that wheat found in the coffins of mummies in Egypt 
has sprung up freely when sown, but the proof of any 
having done so is thought by others insufficient. Yet 
there is nothing to make such a thing impossible, and 
perhaps some future explorer like Dr Layard or Mr 
Loftus, may come on grains older still, in Babylon or 
Nineveh, and give Us bread from the wheat that 
Nebuchadnezzar or Semiramis used to eat. Indeed, 



64 Woodpeckers. 

M. Michelet tells us that some seeds found in the in- 
conceivably ancient Diluvial drift readily grew on 
being sown. 

During the busy weeks in which we were getting 
our first field ready, we boys, though always out of 
doors, were not always at work. Henry used to bring 
out his gun with him, to take a shot at anything he 
could see, and though there were not very many 
creatures round us, yet there were more when you 
looked for them than you would otherwise have thought. 
The woodpeckers were the strangest to us among them 
all. They would come quite near us, running up and 
down the trunks of the trees in every way, as flies run 
over a window pane. There were three or four kinds : 
one, the rarest, known, by being partly yellow ; another, 
by the feathers on its back having a strange, hairy-like 
look ; the third was a smaller bird, about six inches 
long, but otherwise like its hairy relation ; the fourth, 
and commonest, was the red-headed woodpecker. 
This one gets its name from the beautiful crimson of 
its head and neck, and the contrast of this bright 
colour with the black and white of its body and wings, 
and with its black tail, makes it look very pretty.' 
They would light on stumps or trees close to us, run- 
ning round to the other side till we passed^ if we came 
very close, and then reappearing the next instant. 
They kept up a constant tap, tap, tapping with their 
heavy bills on the bark of any tree on which they 
happened to alight, running up the trunk, and stopping 



Woodpeckers, 65 

every minute with their tails resting on the bark to 
support them, and hammering as if for the mere love 
of the noise. Every grub or insect they thus discov- 
ered, was, in a moment, caught on their tongue, which 
was thrust out for the purpose. Henry shot one of 
them, after missing pretty often, for we were just be- 
ginning shooting as well as everything else, and we 
brought it to the house to let my sisters see it, and 
to have another look at it ourselves. Being a bit of 
an ornithologist, he pointed out to us how the toes 
were four in number — two before and two behind — 
and how they were spread out to give the creature as 
firm a hold as possible of the surface on which it was 
climbing, and how its tail was shaped like a wedge, and 
the feathers very strong, to prop it up while at work. 
Then there was the great heavy head and heavy bill, 
with the long thin neck, putting me in mind of a 
stone-breaker's hammer, with the thin handle and the 
heavy top. But its tongue was, perhaps, the most 
curious part of the whole. There were two long, 
arched, tendon-like things, which reached from the 
tongue round the skull, and passed quite over it 
down to the root of the bill at the nostrils ; and, 
inside the wide circle thus made, a muscle, fixed at its 
two ends, provided the means of thrusting out the 
tongue with amazing swiftness and to a great length, 
just as you may move forwards the top of a fishing-rod 
in an instant by pulling the line which runs from the 
tip to the reel. My brother Robert, who was of a 
5 



66 Chitmunks. 

religious disposition, could not help telling us, when 
we had seen all this, that he thought it just another 
proof of the wonderful wisdom and goodness of God 
to see how everything was adapted to its particular end. 
One little creature used to give us a great deal of 
amusement and pleasure. It was what Nisbet called 
a chitmunk, the right name of it being the ground- 
squirrel. It was a squirrel in every respect, except 
that, instead of the great bushy tail turned up over the 
back, it had a rounded hairy one, which was short and 
straight, and was only twitched up and down. The' 
little things were to be seen every now and then 
on any old log, that marked where a tree had fallen 
long before. The moment we looked at them they 
would stare at us with their great black eyes, and, if 
we moved, they were into some hole in the log, or 
over the back of it, and out of sight in an instant. 
We all felt kindly disposed towards them, and never 
tried to shoot them. I suppose they were looking for 
nuts on the ground, as they feed largely on them, and 
carry off a great many, as well as stores of other food, 
in little cheek-pouches which they have, that they may 
be provided for in winter. They do not make their 
houses, like the other squirrels, in holes in the trees, 
but dig burrows in the woods, under logs, or in hillocks 
of earth, or at the roots of the trees, forming a wind- 
ing passage down to it, and then making two or three 
pantries, as I may call them, at the sides of their nest, 
or sitting and sleeping-room, for their extra food. They 



The Blue Jay. 67 

do not often go up the trees, but if they be frightened 
and cannot get to their holes, they run up the trunks 
and get from branch to branch with wonderful quick- 
ness. Sometimes we tried to catch one when it would 
thus go up some small, low tree, of which there were 
numbers on the edge of a stream two fields back on 
our farm \ but it was always too quick for us, and 
after making sure I had it, and climbing the tree to get 
hold of it, it would be off in some magical way before 
our eyes, let us do our best. Then, at other times, we 
would try to catch one in an eld log, but with no 
better success. Henry would get to the one end and 
I to the other, and make sure it couldn't get out. It 
always did get out, however, and all we could do was 
to admire its beautiful shape, with the squirrel head, 
and a soft brown coat which was striped with black, 
lengthwise, and its arch little tail, which was never still 
a moment. 

Some of the birds were the greatest beauties you 
could imagine. We would see one fly into the woods 
all crimson, or seemingly so, and perhaps, soon after, 
another, which was like a living emerald. They were 
small birds — not larger than a thrush — and not very 
numerous ; but I cannot trust myself to give their true 
names. The blue jay was one of the prettiest of all 
the feathered folk that used to come and look at us. 
What a bright, quick eye it has ! what a beautiful blue 
crest to raise or let down as its pride or curiosity moves 
it or passes away ! how exquisitely its wings are capped 



68 The Blue Bird. 

with blue, and barred with black and white ! and its 
back — could anything be finer than the tint of blue on 
it ? Its very tail would be ornament enough for any 
one bird, with its elegant tapering shape, and its feathers 
barred so charmingly with black and white. But we 
got afterwards to have a kind of ill-will at the little 
urchins, when we came to have an orchard ; for greater 
thieves than they are, when the fancy takes them, it 
would be hard to imagine. When breeding, they 
generally kept pretty close to the woods ; but in Sep- 
tember or October they would favour the gardens with 
visits ! and then woe to any fruit within reach ! But 
yet they ate so many caterpillars at times that I suppose 
we should not have grudged them a cherry feast oc- 
casionally. I am sure they must be great coxcombs, 
small though they be, for they are not much larger 
than a thrush, though the length of their tail makes 
them seem larger : they carry their heads so pertty, like 
to show themselves off so well, and are so constantly 
raising and letting down their beautiful crest, as if all 
the time thinking how well they look. John James 
Audubon, the ornithologist, got a number of them, of 
both sexes, alive, and tried to carry them over to 
England, to make us a present of the race, if it were 
able to live in our climate ; but the poor things all 
sickened and died on the way. 

I must not forget the dear little blue bird, which 
comes all the way from the Far South as early as March, 
to stay the summer with us, not leaving till the middle 



The Blue Bird. „ 69 

or end of November, when he seems to bid a melan- 
choly farewell to his friends, and returns to his winter 
retreat. In the spring and summer every place is en- 
livened with his cheerful song ; but with the change of 
the leaf in October it dies away into a single note, as 
if he too felt sorry that the beautiful weather was 
leaving. 

The blue bird is to America very much, in summer, 
what the robin is to us in England in winter — hopping 
as familiarly as if it trusted every one, about the orchards 
and the fences. Sometimes it builds in a hole in an 
old apple-tree, for generation after generation ; but 
very often it takes up its abode in little houses built 
specially for it, and fixed on a high pole, or on the top 
of some of the outhouses. We were sometimes amused 
to see its kindly ways while the hen was sitting on the 
nest. The little husband would sit close by her, and 
lighten her cares by singing his sweetest notes over and 
over ; and, when he chanced to have found some morsel 
that he thought would please her — some insect or other 
— he would fly with it to her, spread his wing over her, 
and put it into her mouth. We used to take it for 
granted that it was the same pair that built year after 
year in the same spot, but I never heard of anything 
being done to prove it in any case. In that of other 
birds, however, this attachment to one spot has been 
very clearly shown. I have read somewhere of copper 
rings having been fastened round the legs of swallows, 
which were observed the year after to have returned, 



70 The Flight of Birds. 

with this mark on them, to their former haunts. How 
is it that these tiny creatures can keep a note in their 
head of so long a journey as they take each autumn, 
and cross country after country straight to a place 
thousands of miles distant ? A man could not do it 
without all the helps he could get I lose myself every 
now and then in the streets of any new city I may 
visit ; and as to making my way across a whole king- 
dom without asking, I fear I would make only a very 
zigzag progress. Some courier pigeons, which one of 
the Arctic voyagers took to the Far North, on being 
let loose, made straight for the place to which they had 
been accustomed in Ayrshire, in an incredibly short 
time. Lithgow, the old traveller, tells us that one of 
these birds will carry a letter from Bagdad to Aleppo, 
which is thirty days' journey at the Eastern rate of 
travel, in forty-eight hours, so that it could have had no 
hesitation, but must have flown straight for its distant 
home. They say that when on their long flights, they 
and other birds, such as swallows, soar to a great height, 
and skim round in circles for a time, as if surveying the 
bearings of the land beneath them ; but what eyes they 
must have to see clearly over such a landscape as must 
open at so great an elevation ! and how little, after all, 
can that help them on a journey of thousands of miles ! 
Moore's beautiful verse speaks of the intentness with 
which the pigeon speeds to its goal, and how it keeps 
so high up in the air : — 



The Flight of Birds. y i 

1 The dove let loose in eastern skies, 

Returning fondly home, 
Ne'er stoops to earth her wings, nor flies 
Where idler warblers roam.' 

I have noticed that all birds, when on long flights, 
seek the upper regions of the air : the ducks and swans, 
that used to pass over us in the spring, on their way to 
their breeding-places in the Arctic regions, were always 
so high that they looked like strings of moving specks 
in the sky. They always fly in a certain order, the 
geese in single file, arranged like a great V, the two 
sides of it stretching far away from each other, but the 
birds which form the figure never losing their respective 
places. Some of the ducks, on the other hand, kept in 
wedge-shaped phalanxes, like the order in which 
Hannibal disposed his troops at the Battle of Cannae. 
Whether they fly so high to see better, or because the 
air is thinner and gives them less resistance, or to be 
out of the reach of danger, or to keep from any tempt- 
ation to alight and loiter on their way, it would be 
hard to tell, but with all the help which their height can 
give them, it has always been a great wonder to me how 
they knew the road to take. There must surely be 
some senses in such creatures of which we do not know, 
or those they have must be very much more acute than 
ours. How does a bee find its way home for miles ? 
And how does the little humming-bird — of which I shall 
speak more hereafter — thread its way, in its swift arrowy 



72 The Flight of Birds. 

flight, from Canada to the far South, and back again, 
each year ? I am afraid we must all confess that we 
cannot tell. Our knowledge, of which we are some- 
times so proud, is a very poor affair after all. 



73 




CHAPTER V. 

Some family changes — Amusements — Cow-hunting — Our * side- 
line * — The bush — Adventures with rattlesnakes — Garter- 
snakes — A frog's flight for life — Black squirrels. 

HAVE talked so long about the farm, and 
the beasts, and birds, that I had almost 
forgotten to speak of some changes 
which took place in our family in the 
first summer of our settlement. My eldest sister had, 
it seems, found time in Toronto to get in love, in spite 
of having to be mistress of such a household, and, of 
course, nothing could keep her past the week fixed for 
her marriage, which was to take place about two 
months after her getting to the River. She must needs, 
when the time drew near, get back to her beloved, 
and had to look out her share of the furniture, &c, to 
take with her, or rather to send off before. My. eldest 
brother, Andrew, also, had cast many wry looks at the 
thick logs, and at his blistered hands, and had groaned 
through every very hot day, maintaining that there 
would soon be nothing left of him but the bones. 
1 Melting moments, girls/ he would say to my sisters ; 
1 melting moments, as the sailor said under the line. 



74 Some Family Changes. 

I can't stand this • I shall go back to England.' So 
he and my eldest sister made it up that he should take 
her, and such of her chattels as were not sent on 
before, to Toronto, and should leave us under the 
charge of Robert. When the day came, we all went 
down to the wharf with them, and after a rather 
sorrowful parting, heard in due time of the marriage of 
the one, and, a good while afterwards — for there were 
no steamers in those days across the Atlantic — of the 
safe return of the other to England. This was the first 
break up of our household in America \ and it left us 
for a time lonely enough, though there were still so 
many of us together. We didn't care much for my 
sister's leaving, for she would still be within reach, but 
it was quite likely we should never see Andrew again. 
I have always thought it was a very touching thing that 
those who had grown up together should be separated, 
after a few years, perhaps never to meet again. My 
brother Robert made a very tender allusion to this at 
worship that night, and moved us all by praying that 
we might all of us lead' such Christian lives, through 
God's grace, that we might meet again in the Great 
Hereafter, if not in our earthly pilgrimage. He wound 
up the service by repeating in his very striking way — 
for he recited beautifully — -.Burns' touching words : — 

' And when, at last, we reach that coast, 

O'er life's rough ocean driven, 
May we rejoice, no wanderer lost ; 
A family in Heaven.' 



Amusements. 75 

After our wheat had been sown we had time to take 
a little leisure, and what with fishing at the end of the 
long wharf by day, and in the canoe, by torch-light, in 
the evenings, or strolling through the woods with our 
guns or rifles, or practising with the latter at a rough 
target made by cutting a broad slice off a tree, from 
which we dug out the bullets again to save the lead, the 
autumn passed very pleasantly. Of course it was not 
all play. There was plenty more forest to be cleared, 
and we kept at that pretty steadily, though a half-holiday 
or a whole one did not seem out of the way to us. I, 
as the youngest, had for my morning and evening's task 
to go to the woods and bring home the cows to be 
milked, and at times, the oxen, when we wanted them 
for some kind of work. The latter were left in the 
woods for days together, when we had nothing for 
them to do, and when we did bring them in, we always 
gave them a little salt at the barn-door to try to get 
them into the habit of returning of their own accord. 
Cattle and horses in Canada all need to be often 
indulged with this luxury ; the distance from the sea 
leaving hardly any of it in the air, or in the grass and 
other vegetation. It was sometimes a pleasure to go 
cow-hunting, as we called it, but sometimes quite the 
reverse. I used to set oyt, with the dogs for com- 
pany, straight up the blazed line at the side of our lot. 
I mean, up a line along which the trees had been 
marked by slices cut out of their sides, to show the 
way to the lots at the back of ours. It was all open 



j6 Cow-hunting. 

for a little way back, for the post road passed up from 
the bank of the river along the side of our farm, for 
five or six acres, and then turned at a right angle 
parallel with the river again, and there was a piece of 
the side line cleared for some distance beyond the 
turn. After this piece of civilization had been passed, 
however, nature had it all to herself. The first twelve 
or fifteen acres lay fine and high, and could almost 
always be got over easily, but the ground dropped 
down at that distance to the edge of a little stream, 
and rose on the other side, to stretch away in a dead 
level, for I know not how many miles. The streamlet, 
which was sometimes much swollen after thaws or rain, 
was crossed by a rough sort of bridge formed of the 
cuts of young trees which rested on stouter supports of 
the same kind, stretching from bank to bank. One of 
the freshets, however, for a time destroyed this easy 
communication, and left us no way of crossing till it 
was repaired, but either by fording, or by venturing 
over the trunk of a tree, which was felled so as to reach 
across the gap and make an apology for a bridge. It 
used at first to be a dreadful job to get over this 
primitive pathway, but I got so expert that I could run 
over it easily and safely enough. The dogs, however, 
generally preferred the water., unless when it was deep. 
Then there were pieces of swampy land, farther back, 
over which a string of felled trees, one beyond the 
other, offered, again, the only passage. These were 
the worst to cross, for the wet had generally taken off 



Cow-huntinc 



& ■ 



77 



the bark, and they often bent almost into the water 
with your weight. One day, when I was making my 
best attempt at getting over one of these safely, an old 
settler on a lot two miles back made his appearance at 
the farther side. 

' Bad roads, Mr Brown,' said I, accosting him, for 
every one speaks to every one else in such a place as 
that. 

6 Yes, Mr Stanley — bad roads, indeed ; but it's 
nothing to have only to walk out and in. What do 
you think it must have been when I had to bring my 
furniture back on a sleigh in summer-time ? We used 
waggons on the dry places, and then got sleighs for the 
swamps ; and, Mr Stanley, do you know, I'm sure two 
or three times you hardly saw more of the oxen for a 
minute than just the horns. We had all to go through 
the water ourselves to get them to pull, and even then 
they stuck fast with our load, and Ave had to take it off 
and carry it on our backs the best way we could. You 
don't know anything about it, Mr Stanley. I had to 
carry a chest of drawers on my shoulders through all 
this water, and every bit that we ate for a whole year, 
till we got a crop, had to be brought from the front, 
the same way, over these logs/ 

No doubt he spoke the truth, but, notwithstanding 
his gloomy recollections, it used to be grand fun to go 
back, except when I could not find the cows, or when 
they would not let themselves be driven home. The 
dogs would be off after a squirrel every little while, 



78 Cow-huntiiL 



though they never could catch one, or they would splash 
into the water with a thousand gambols to refresh them- 
selves from the heat, and get quit of the mosquitoes. 
Then there can be nothing more beautiful than the 
woods themselves, when the leaves are in all their 
bravery, and the ground is varied by a thousand forms 
of verdure, wherever an opening lets in the sun. The 
trees are not broad and umbrageous like those in the 
parks of England. Their being crowded together 
makes them grow far higher before the branches begin, 
so that you have great high trunks on every side, like 
innumerable pillars in some vast cathedral, and a high 
open roof of green, far over head, the white and blue 
of the sky filling up the openings in the fretwork of 
the leaves. There is always more or less undergrowth 
to heighten the beauty of the scene, but not enough, 
except in swampy places, to obscure the view, which is 
only closed in the distance by the closer and closer 
gathering of the trees as they recede. The thickness 
of some of these monarchs of the forest, the fine shape 
of others, and the vast height of nearly all ; the ex- 
haustless charms of the great canopy of mingled leaves 
and branches, and sky, and cloud above ; the pictur- 
esque vistas in the openings here and there around ; 
the endless variety of shade, and form in the young 
trees springing up at intervals ; the flowers in one spot, 
the rough fretting of fallen and mouldering trees, 
bright with every tint of fungus, or red with decay, or 
decked with mosses and lichens, in others, and the 



The Bitsh. 



79 



graceful outline of broad beds of fern, contrasting 
with the many-coloured carpet of leaves — made it 
delightful to stroll along. The silence that reigns 
heightens the pleasure and adds a calm solemnity. 
The stroke of an axe can be heard for miles, and so 
may the sound of a cow-bell, as I have sometimes 
found to my sorrow. But it was only when the cows 
or oxen could be easily got that I was disposed to think 
of the poetry of the journey. They always kept to- 
gether, and I knew the sound of our bell at any distance ; 
but sometimes I could not, by any listening, catch it, 
the wearer having perhaps lain down to chew the cud, 
and then, what a holloaing and getting up on fallen 
trees to look for them, and wandering till I was fairly 
tired. One of the oxen had for a time the honour of 
bearing the bell, but I found, after a while, that he 
added to my trouble in finding him and his friends, by 
his cunning, and we transferred it to one of the cows. 
The brute had a fixed dislike to going home, and had 
learned that the tinkle of the bell was a sure prelude 
to his being led off, to prevent which, he actually got 
shrewd enough to hold his head, while resting, in so 
still a way that he hardly made a sound. I have seen 
him, when I had at last hunted him up, looking side- 
ways at me with his great eyes, afraid for his life to 
stir his head lest the horrid clapper should proclaim 
his presence. When I did get them they were not 
always willing to be driven, and would set off with their 
heads and tails up, the oxen accompanying them, the 



80 Adventures with Rattlesnakes. 

bell making a hideous clangour, careering away over 
every impediment, straight into the woods, in, perhaps, 
the very opposite direction to that in which I wished 
to lead them. Then for a race to head them, round 
logs, over logs, through brush and below it, the dogs 
dashing on ahead, where they thought I was going, 
and looking back every minute, as if to wonder what 
I was about. It was sometimes the work of hours to 
get them home, and sometimes for days together we 
could not find them at all. 

There is little to fear from wild animals in the bush 
in Canada. The deer were too frightened to trouble 
us, and, though I have some stories to tell about bears 
and wolves, they w r ere so seldom seen that they did 
not give us much alarm. But I was always afraid of 
the rattlesnakes, especially in the long grass that grew in 
some wet places. I never saw but one, however, and 
that was once, years after, when I was riding up a narrow 
road that had been cut through the woods. My horse 
was at a walk, when, suddenly, it made a great spring 
to one side, very nearly unseating me, and then stood 
looking at a low bush and trembling in every limb. 
The next moment I heard the horrible rattle, and my 
horse commenced a set of leaps from one side to the 
other, backing all the while, and snorting wildly. I 
could not get off, and as little could I get my horse 
turned away, so great was his fear. Two men luckily 
came up just at this time, and at once saw the cause 
of the poor brute's alarm, which was soon ended by one 



Adventtcres with Rattlesnakes. 8 1 

of them making a dash at the snake with a thick stick, 
and breaking its neck at a blow. Henry told us once 
that he was chased by one which he had disturbed, and 
I can easily credit it, for I have seen. smaller snakes 
get very infuriated, and if one was alarmed, as in 
Henry's case, it might readily glide after him for some 
distance. However, it fared badly in the end, for a 
stick ended its days abruptly. I was told one story that 
I believe is true, though ridiculous enough. A good 
man, busy mowing in his field, in the summer costume 
of hat., shirt, and boots, found himself, to his horror, 
face to face with a rattlesnake, which-, on his instantly 
throwing down his scythe and turning to flee, sprang at 
his tails and fixed its fangs in them inextricably. The 
next spring — the cold body of the snake struck against 
his legs, making him certain he had been bitten. He 
was a full mile from his house, but despair added 
strength and speed. Away he flew — over logs, fences, 
everything — the snake dashing against him with every 
jump, till he reached his home, into which he rushed, 
shouting, % The snake, the snake ! I'm bitten, I'm 
bitten ! 7 Of course they were all alarmed enough, but 
when they came to examine, the terror proved to be 
the whole of the injury suffered, the snake's body having 
been knocked to pieces on the way, the head only 
remaining fixed in the spot at which it had originally 
sprung. David and Henry were one day at work in 
our field, where there were some bushes close to a 
stump near the fence. The two were near each other 
6 



82 Adventures* with Rattlesnakes. 

when the former saw a number of young rattlesnakes 
at Henry's side, and, as a good joke, for we laughed at 
the danger, it seemed so slight, cried out — ' Hemy ! 
Henry ! look at the rattlesnakes ! ' at the same time 
mounting the fence to the highest rail to enjoy Henry's 
panic. But the young ones were not disposed to trouble 
any one, so that he instantly saw that he had nothing 
to fear \ whereas, on looking towards David, there was 
quite enough to turn the laugh the other way. ' Look 
at your feet, David ! ' followed in an instant, and you 
may easily imagine how quickly the latter was down 
the outer side of the fence, and away to a safe distance, 
when, on doing as he was told, he saw the mother of 
the brood poised below him for a spring, which, but 
for Henry, she would have made the next moment. 

Pigs have a wonderful power of killing snakes, their 
hungry stomachs tempting them to the attack for the 
sake of eating their bodies. I don't know that they 
ever set on rattlesnakes, but a friend of mine saw one 
with the body of a great black snake, the thickness of 
his wrist, and four or five feet long, lying over its back, 
Monsieur Pig converting the whole into pork as fast as 
he could, by vigorously swallowing joint after joint. 

The garter-snake is the only creature of its kind 
which is very common in Canada, and very beautiful 
and harmless it is. But it is never seen without getting 
killed, unless it beat a very speedy retreat into some 
log or pile of stones, or other shelter. The influence 
of the story of the Fall in the Garden of Eden is fatal 



Garter-snakes. 83 

to the whole tribe of snakes, against every individual 
ef which a merciless crusade is waged the moment one 
is seen. The garter-snake feeds on frogs and other 
small creatures, as I chanced to see one day when 
walking up the road. In a broad bed of what they 
call tobacco-weed, a chase for life or death was being 
made between a poor frog and one of these snakes. 
The frog evidently knew it was in danger, for you never 
saw such leaps as it would take to get away from its 
enemy, falling into the weeds, after each, so as to be 
hidden for a time, if it had only been able to keep so. 
But the snake would raise itself upon a slight coil of its 
tail, and from that height search every place with its 
bright wicked eyes for his prey, and presently glide off 
towards where the poor frog lay panting. Then for 
another leap, and another poising, to scan the field. I 
don't know how it ended, for I had watched them till 
they were a good way off. How the snake would ever 
swallow it, if it caught it, is hard to imagine, for certainly 
it was at least three times as thick as itself. But we 
know that snakes can do wonderful things in that way. 
Why, the cobra di capello, at the Zoological Gardens, 
swallowed a great railway rug some time ago, and 
managed to get it up again when it found it could 
make nothing of it. It is a mercy our jaws do not 
distend in such a fashion, for we would look very 
horrible if we were in the habit of swallowing two large 
loaves at a time, or of taking our soup with a spoon a 
foot broad, which would, however, be no worse than a 



84 Black Squirrels. 

garter-snake swallowing a frog whole. It is amazing 
how fierce some of the small snakes are. I have seen 
one of six or eight inches in length dart at a walking- 
stick by which it had been disturbed with a force so 
great as to be felt in your hand at the farther end. 
Homer, in the Iliad, says that Menelaus was as brave 
as a fly, which, though so small, darts once and again 
in a man's face, and will not be driven away ; but he 
might have had an additional comparison for his hero, 
if he had seen a snake no thicker than a pencil 
charging at a thick stick held in a man's hand. 

We had very pleasant recreation now and then, 
hunting black squirrels, which were capital eating. 
They are much larger than either the gray or the red 
ones, and taste very much like rabbits, from which, 
indeed, it would be hard to distinguish them when 
they are on the table. Both they and the gray squirrel 
are very common, and are sometimes great pests to 
the farmer, making sad havoc with his Indian corn 
while green, and with the young wheat. In Pennsyl- 
vania this at one time came to such a pitch that a law 
was passed, offering threepence a- head for every one 
destroyed, which resulted, in 1749, in ^8000 being 
paid in one year as head-money for those killed. 
Their great numbers sometimes develop strange in- 
stincts, very different from those we might expect. 
From scarcity of food, or some other unknown cause, 
all the squirrels in a large district will at times take it 
into their heads to make a regular migration to some 



Black Squirrels. 85 

other region. Scattered bodies are said to gather from 
distant points, and marshal themselves into one great 
host, which then sets out on its chosen march, allow- 
ing nothing whatever — be it mountain or river — to stop 
them. We ourselves had prqof enough that nothing 
in the shape of water, short of a lake, could do it. 
Our neighbours agreed in telling us that, a few years 
before we came, it had been a bad summer for nuts, 
and that the squirrels of all shades had evidently seen 
the perils of the approaching winter, and made up 
their minds to emigrate to more favoured lands. 
Whether they held meetings on the subject, and dis- 
cussed the policy to be pursued, was not known \ but 
it is certain that squirreldom at large decided on a 
united course of action. Having come to this de- 
termination, they gathered, it appears, in immense 
numbers, in the trees at the water's edge, where the 
river was at least a mile broad, and had a current of 
about two miles an hour, and, without hesitation, 
launched off in thousands on the stream, straight for 
the other side. Whether they all could swim so far, 
no one, of course, could tell ; but vast numbers reached 
the southern shore, and made for the woods, to seek 
there the winter supplies which had been deficient in 
the district they had left. How strange for little 
creatures like them to contrive and carry out an 
organized movement, which looked as complete and 
deliberate as the migration of as many human beings ! 
What led them to go to the south rather than to 



86 Black Squirrels. 

the north? There were no woods in sight on the 
southern side, though there were forests enough in the 
interior. I think we can only come to the conclusion, 
which cannot be easily confuted, that the lower creatures 
have some faculties of which we have no idea what- 
ever. 

The black squirrels are very hardy. You may see 
them in the woods, even in the middle of winter, 
when their red or gray brethren, and the little 
ground squirrels, are not to be seen. On bright 
days, however, even these more delicate creatures 
venture out, to see what the world is like, after 
their long seclusion in their holes in the trees. 
They must gather a large amount of food in the 
summer and autumn to be sufficient to keep them 
through the long months of cold and frost, and their 
diligence in getting ready in time for the season when 
their food is buried out of their reach is a capital 
example to us. They carry tilings from great distances 
to their nests, if food be rather scarce, or if they ftnd 
any delicacy worth laying up for a treat in winter. 
When the wheat is ripe they come out in great numbers 
to get a share of the ears, and run off with as many as 
they can manage to steal. 



87 



CHAPTER VI. 

Spearing fish— Ancient British canoes — Indian ones — A bargain 
with an Indian — Henry's cold bath — Canadian thunderstorms 
— Poor Yorick's death — Our glorious autumns — The change 
of the leaf — Sunsets — Indian summer — The fall rains and the 
roads — The first snow — Canadian cold — A winter landscape — 
1 Ice-storms' — Snow crystals — The minute perfection of God's 
works — Deer-shooting — David's misfortune — Useless cruelty 
— Shedding of the stag's horns. 

JPEARING fish by moonlight was a great 
amusement with us in the beautiful 
autumn evenings. We had bought a 
canoe from an Indian for eight dollars, I 
think — that is, about thirty-two shillings, and it formed 
our boat on these occasions. Perhaps, however, 
before speaking of our adventures on the waters, I 
had better describe this new purchase, and the scene 
of its transference to our hands, which was as curious 
as itself. It was made out of a long cut of a black 
walnut-tree, which had been burned and hollowed* to 
the required depth, breadth, and length, and had 
then been shaped, outside, by an axe, to the model 
proposed. They are generally quite light, but ours 
was, to other canoes, what a ship's boat is to a skiff. 




88 Spearing Fish. 

It must have taken a long time to finish, but time is 
of no value to an Indian. Indeed, the longer any- 
thing takes him the better, as it gives him at least 
something to do, when, otherwise, he would likely 
have relapsed into total idleness. There is no keel 
on canoes, but only a round bottom, and the ends are 
sharp and both alike. Of course, such a vessel has a 
natural facility at rolling, and needs only the slightest 
aid on your part to turn in the water like a log, so 
that safety depends very much on your being steady, 
and not leaning, under any circumstances, to either 
side. In some parts of Canada they are made of the 
tough, light bark of the birch tree, which is sewed into 
a long sheet, and stretched over a light but strong 
framework of the desired shape- Before using it, the 
bark is thoroughly soaked in oil to make it waterproof. 
When finished, such a canoe is really elegant, rising 
high into a wide circular form at the ends, which are 
made very sharp to cut the water easily. I have seen 
them beautifully finished, with differently coloured 
porcupine quills worked into the edges, and fanciful 
designs at the ends. They are so light that one 
which will hold twenty men weighs only a few 
hundred -weight, and can be easily carried by three or 
foilr men. Then, they are so elastic that they yield 
to blows which would break a canoe of wood. When 
they do get an injury, it is amusing to see how easily 
they are mended. You can darn them like a stock- 
ing, or patch them like a shoe, using wire, however, 



Spearing Fish. 89 

instead of thread, and making all tight by a coating of 
the resinous matter got from the red pine. The 
ingenuity that invented such a refinement on the 
common canoe, as is shown in the birch-bark one, is 
enough to redeem the character of the Indian from 
the low estimate of his mechanical powers sometimes 
heard. If we wonder at the contrast between such 
vessels at their best and our beautiful boats and ships, 
we must remember that our ancestors could boast of 
nothing better than these Indians make to-day. In 
both Scotland and England, canoes have been often 
found in draining a lake, or in excavations near 
streams, or near the sea-shore, where bogs or other 
causes have covered the ancient surface of the ground. 
One was discovered some years since at the foot of 
the Ochill hills, many feet under a bog, and not very 
far from it there was found the skeleton of a small 
whale, with the head of a harpoon sticking in its back- 
bone. Others, found elsewhere, are preserved in 
various public and private museums. It is striking to 
think from such discoveries as these, and from what 
we know of the boats of savage nations generally over 
the world, how nearly men of all ages when placed in 
the same position, when they are at similar stages of 
civilization, resemble each other in their thoughts and 
contrivances to meet the common wants of life. All 
over the world hollow trees have been used for the 
first steps of navigation, and the birch-bark canoe still 
finds a representative in the coracle which the Welsh 



90 Spearing Fish. 

fisherman carries home on his back after using it, as 
his ancestors have done for generation after generation, 
while the Greenlander goes to sea in his light kaiack 
of seal-skin, as the polished inhabitant of Babylon, as 
Herodotus tells us, used to float his goods down the 
Great River in round boats made of skins stretched 
on a frame of wicker-work. 

Instead of oars, the canoe is propelled by paddles, 
which are short oars, with a broader blade. They 
are held in both hands, so that a single person has 
only one to work instead of having one in each hand, 
as with oars, 'when alone in a boat. An Indian in a 
canoe, if by himself, sits at the end, and strikes his 
paddle into the water at each side alternately, every 
now and then putting it out behind as a rudder, to 
turn himself in any particular direction. The one we 
bought was, as I have said, far too heavy for com- 
fortable use, and was sold to us, I believe, for that 
reason. It was worse to paddle it empty than to 
paddle a proper one full of people — at least we came 
to think so \ but we knew no better at first than to like 
it for its massiveness, never thinking of the weight we 
should have to push through the water. The price, 
however, was not very great, though more than would 
have got us a right one, had we known enough. The 
Indian who sold it to us paddled up with it, with his 
wife in it with him, one morning, his dress being a 
dirty printed calico shirt, and a pair of cloth leggings ; 
hers, the never-failing blanket, and leggings, like those 



Spearing Fish. 9 1 

of her husband. They were both rather elderly, and 
by no means attractive in appearance. Robert and 
the rest of us happened to be near the fence at the 
river-side at the time ; and as the Indian came up, he 
saluted him, as is usual, with the words, ' Bo' jour,' 
a corruption of the phrase, c Bon jour/ indicating 
curiously the extent of the old French dominion in 
America — every Indian, in any part, understanding, 
or, at least, acknowledging, it. A grunt on the part 
of our visitor conveyed his return of the courtesy, 
and was presently followed by, - C'noo, sell, good — 
you buy?' Robert, thus addressed, willingly enough 
entered into temptation, having determined, some time 
before, to buy one. Like every one else in Canada, 
he seemed naturally to think that bad English makes 
good Indian, and pursued the dialogue somewhat as 
follows : — Robert — ' Good c'noo ? ' Indian, with a 
grunt, ' Good,' making sundry signs with his hands, 
to show how it skimmed the water, and how easily it 
could be steered, both qualities being most sadly 
deficient, as he must have known. Robert — ' What 
for you ask ? ' Indian, holding up eight fingers, and 
nodding towards them, ' dollar/ making, immediately 
after, an imitation of smoking, to stand for an ad- 
ditional value in tobacco. Robert — * Why you sell ? ' 
Indian — No answer, but a grunt, which might either 
hide a wish to decline a difficult question, by pretend- 
ing ignorance, or anything else we like to suppose. 
Then followed more dumb-show, to let us know what 



^ Spearing Fish. 

a treasure he was parting with. My brother found it 
hopeless to get any information from him, nothing but 
grunts and an odd word or two of English following 
a number of inquiries. After a time the bargain was 
struck, and having received the money and the 
tobacco, he and his spouse departed, laughing in their 
sleeve, I dare say, at their success in getting a canoe 
well sold which needed two or three men to propel it 
at a reasonable rate. 

It was with this affair we used to go out on our 
spearing expeditions. A cresset, like those used in 
old times to hold watchmen's lights, and a spear with 
three prongs and a long handle, were all the apparatus 
required. The cresset was fixed in the bows of the 
canoe, and a knot of pitch-pine kindled in it, threw a 
bright light over and through the water. Only very 
still nights would do, for if there was any ripple the 
fish could not be seen. When it was perfectly calm 
we filled our cresset, and setting it a-fire, one of us 
would take his place near the light, spear in hand, 
standing ready to use it ; and another seated himself 
at the stern with a paddle, and, with the least possible 
noise, pushed off along the shallow edge of the river. 
The fish could be seen a number of feet down, resting 
on the bottom ; but in very deep water the spear 
could not get down quickly enough, while the position 
of the fish itself was changed so much by the refrac- 
tion of the light, that it was very hard to hit it even if 
we were not too slow. The stillness of the nights — the 



Spearing Fish. 93 

beauty of the shining skies — the delicious mildness of 
the autumnal evenings — the sleeping smoothness of 
the great river — the play of light and shade from our 
fire — the white sand of the bottom, with the forms of 
the fish seen on it as if through coloured crystal — and 
the excitement of darting at them every few yards, 
made the whole delightful. At first we always missed, 
by miscalculating the position of our intended booty ; 
but, after going out a few times with John Courtenay, 
a neighbour, and noticing how much he allowed for 
the difference between the real and the apparent spot 
for which to aim, we got the secret of the art, and 
gradually managed to become pretty good marksmen. 
There was an island in the river, at the upper end of 
which a long tongue of shallow bottom reached up the 
stream, and on this we found the best sport : black 
bass, pike, herrings, white-fish, cat-fish, sun-fish, and I 
don't know what else, used to fall victims on this our 
best preserve. I liked almost as well to paddle as to 
stand in the bows to spear the fish, for watching the 
spearsman and looking down at the fish kept you in a 
flash of pleasant excitement all the time. Not a word 
was spoken in the canoe, but I used to think words 
enough. ' There's a great sun-fish at the right hand, 
let me steer for it • ' and silently the paddle would 
move us towards it, my brother motioning me with his 
hand either to hold back or turn more this way, or 
that, as seemed necessary. 'I wonder if he'll get 
him ! ' would rise in my mind, as the spear was slowly 



94 Henry s Cold Bath. 

poised. ' Will he dart off ? ' i He moves a little — ah ! 
there's a great pike ; make a dart at him — whew, he's 
gone I ' and, sure enough, only the bare ground was 
visible. Perhaps the next was a white-fish, and in a 
moment a successful throw would transfix it, and then, 
the next, it would be in the bottom of the canoe. But 
it was not always plain sailing with us, for Henry was 
so fierce in his thrusts at first, that, one night, when 
he made sure of getting a fine bass he saw, he over- 
balanced himself with a jerk, and went in along with 
the spear, head over heels. The water was not deep 
enough to do him any harm, but you may be sure we 
did, not fish any more that night. Picking himself 
up, the unfortunate wight vented his indignation on 
the poor fish, which, by most extraordinary logic, he 
blamed for his calamity. I couldn't for the world 
help laughing ; nor could Henry himself, when he 
had got a little over his first feelings of astonishment • 
and mortification. 

The quantity of fish that some can get in a night's 
spearing is often wonderful. I have watched Cour- 
tenay, on a night when fish were plenty, lifting them 
from the water almost every minute, though very few 
were larger than herrings, and he had only their backs 
at which to aim. In some parts of Canada there was 
higher game than in our waters — the salmon-trout, 
which is often as large as our salmon, and the ' maske- 
longe,' a corruption of the French words ' masque ' 
and ' longue,' a kind of pike with a projecting snout, 



Canadian Thunder storms. 95 

whence its name — offering a prize of which we could 
not boast. It must be hard work to get such prey out 
of the water, but the harder it is the more exciting is 
the sport for those who are strong enough. The 
Indians in some districts live to a great extent on the 
fish they get in this way. 

I had almost forgotten to speak of the thunder and 
lightning which broke on the sultriness of our hottest 
summer weather. Rain is much less frequent in 
Canada than in Britain, but when it does come, it 
often comes in earnest. It used to rebound from the 
ground for inches, and a very few minutes were suffi- 
cient to make small torrents run down every slope in 
the ground. When we afterwards had a garden in 
front of the house, we found it was almost impossible 
to keep the soil on it from the violence of the rains. 
Indeed, we gave up the attempt on finding everything 
we tried fail, and sowed it all with grass, to the great 
delight of the calves, to whom it was made over as a 
nursery. There is music, no doubt, in the sound of 
rain, both in the light patter of a summer shower, and 
in the big drops that dance on the ground ; but there 
are differences in this as in other kinds. I have stood 
sometimes below the green branches in the woods 
when a thin cloud was dropping its wealth on them, 
and have been charmed by the murmur. But the 
heavy rain that came most frequently in the hot 
weather, falling as if through some vast cullender, was 
more solemn, and filled you with something like awe. 



g6 Canadian Thunderstorms. 

It was often accompanied by thunder and lightning, 
such as those who live in cooler climates seldom hear 
or see. The amount of the electricity in the atmos- 
phere of any country depends very much on the heat 
of the weather. Captain Grahame, who had com- 
manded a frigate on the East India station, told me 
once, when on a short visit, that, in the Straits of 
Malacca, he had to order the sails to be furled every 
day at one o'clock, a thunderstorm coming on regu- 
larly at that hour, accompanied with wind so terrible 
that the canvas of the ship would often have been 
torn into ribbons, and knotted into hard lumps, if he 
had not done so. Thunderstorms are not so exact 
nor so frequent in Canada, but they came too often in 
some years for my taste. I was startled out of my 
sleep one night by a peal that must have burst within 
a few yards of the house, the noise exceeding anything 
I ever heard before or since. You don't know what 
thunder is till a cloud is fired that way at your ear. 
Our poor dog Yorick, which we had brought from 
England with us, was so terrified at the violence of the 
storms that broke over us once and again, that he used 
to jump in through any open window, if the door were 
shut, and hide himself under the bed till all was quiet. 
He lost his life at last, poor brute, through his terror 
at thunder, for one day when it had come on, the 
windows and doors happening to be closed, he rushed 
into the woods in his mortal fear, and coming on the 
shanty of a settler, flew in and secreted himself below 



Canadian Thunderstorms. 97 

his accustomed shelter, the bed. The owner of the 
house, not knowing the facts of the case, naturally- 
enough took it for granted that the dog was mad, and 
forthwith put an end to his troubles by shooting him. 
It was a great grief to us all to lose so kind and 
intelligent a creature, but we could hardly blame his 
destroyer. 

There is a wonderful sublimity sometimes in the 
darkness and solemn hush of nature that goes before 
one of these storms. It seems as if the pulse of all 
things were stopped. The leaves tremble, though 
there is not a breath of wind ; the birds either hide in 
the forest, or fly low, in terror \ the waters look black, 
and are ruffled over all their surface. It seems as if 
all things around knew of the impending terrors. I 
never was more awed in my life, I think, than at the 
sight of the heavens and the accompanying suspense of 
nature one afternoon, in the first summer we were on 
the river. The tempest had not burst, but it lay in 
the bosom of portentous clouds, of a strange, un- 
earthly look and colour, that came down to within a 
very short distance of the earth. Not a sound broke 
the awful silence ; the wind, as well as all things else, 
was still, and yet the storm-clouds moved steadily to 
the south, apparently only a very few yards higher 
than the trees. The darkness was like that of an 
eclipse, and no one could have said at what instant 
the prison of the lightnings and thunders would rend 
above him and envelope him in its horrors. I could 
7 



98 Canadian Thunderstorms. 

not, dared not stir, but stood where I was till the 
great grey masses, through which it seemed as if I 
could see the shimmer of the aerial fires, had sailed 
slowly over to the other side of the river, and the light, 
in part, returned. 

The lightning used to leave curious traces of its 
visits in its effects on isolated trees all round. There 
was a huge pine in a field at the back of the house 
that had been its sport more than once. The great 
top had been torn off, and the trunk was split into 
ribbons, which hung far down the sides. Many others 
which I have seen in different parts had been ploughed 
into deep furrows almost from top to bottom. The 
telegraph-posts, since they have been erected, have 
been an especial attraction. I have seen fully a dozen 
of them in one long stretch split up, and torn spirally, 
through their whole length, by a flash which had struck 
the wire and run along it. That more people are not 
killed by it seems wonderful • yet there are many 
accidents of this kind, after all. In the first or second 
year of our settlement a widow lady, living a few miles 
up the river, was found dead in her bed killed in a 
storm, and we afterwards heard of several others 
perishing in the same way. 

Hail often accompanies thunder and lightning in 
Canada, and the pieces are sometimes of a size that 
lets one sympathize with the Egyptians when Moses 
sent down a similar visitation on them. I remember 
reading of a hailstorm on the Black Sea in the midst 



Our Golden Autumns. 99 

of hot weather, the pieces in which were, some of 
them, a pound weight, threatening death to any one 
they might strike. I never saw them such a size in 
Canada, but used to think that it was bad enough to 
have them an inch and a half long. They must be 
formed by a cloud being whirled up, by some current 
in the air, to such a height as freezes its contents even 
in the heat of summer. 

The weather in the fall was delightful — better, I 
think, than in any other season of the year. Getting 
its name from the beginning of the fall of the leaves, 
this season lasts on till winter pushes it aside. Day 
after day was bright and almost cloudless, and the 
heat had passed into a balmy mildness, which made 
the very feeling of being alive a pleasure. Every- 
thing combined to make the landscape beautiful. The 
great resplendent river, flowing so softly it seemed 
scarce to move — its bosom a broad sheet of molten 
silver, on which clouds, and sky, and white sails, and 
even the farther banks, with the houses, and fields, 
and woods, far back from the water, were painted as 
in a magic mirror — was a beautiful sight, of which 
we never tired \ like the swans in St Mary's Loch, 
which, Wordsworth says, 'float double, swan and 
shadow,' we had ships in as well as on the waters ; 
and not a branch, nor twig, nor leaf of the great trees 
nor of the bushes, nor a touch in the open landscape, 
was awanting, as we paddled along the shores, or 
looked across. 



ioo Our Golden Autumns. 

And what shall I say of the sunsets? Milton 
says — 

1 Now came still evening on, and twilight grey 
Had in her sober livery all things clad/ 

But this would not do for some of those autumn days. 
The yellow light would fill earth, and air, and sky. 
The trees, seen between you and the setting sun, were 
shining amber, in trunk, and branch, and leaf; and 
the windows of neighbours' houses were flaming 
gold; while here and there branches on which the 
sun shone at a different angle seemed light itself; 
and in the distance the smoke rose purple, till, while 
you gazed, the whole vision faded, and faded, through 
every shade of green and violet, into the dark-blue of 
the stars. 

By the beginning of September the first frosts had 
touched the trees, and the change of colour in the 
leaves at once set in. It is only when this has taken 
place that the forests put on their greatest beauty; 
though, indeed, a feeling of sadness was always asso- 
ciated with these autumnal splendours, connected as 
they are, like the last colours of the dolphin, with 
thoughts of decay and death. With each day, after 
the change had commenced, the beauty increased. 
Each kind of tree — the oak, the elm, the beach, the 
ash, the birch, the walnut, and, above all, the maple 
— had its own hue, and every hue was lovely. Then 
there were the solemn pines, and tamaracks, and ce- 



The Change of the Leaf, i o i 

dars, setting off the charms of their gayer brethren by 
their sober green, which at a distance looked almost 
black. The maple-leaf, the first to colour, remained, 
throughout, the most beautiful, in its golden yellow and 
crimson. No wonder it has become to Canada what 
the shamrock is to Ireland, or the rose and the thistle 
to England and Scotland. The woods looked finest, 
I think, when the tints are just beginning, and green, 
yellow, and scarlet are mingled in every shade of 
transition. But what sheets of golden flame they 
became after a time ! Then every leaf had something 
of its own in which it differed from all others. Yonder, 
the colours blended together into pink of the brightest 
tint; then came a dash of lilac and blue, and, away 
by itself, a clump rose, like an islet, of glowing red 
gold. Lofty trees, and humble undergrowth, and 
climbing creepers — all alike owned the magic influence, 
and decked the landscape with every tint that can be 
borrowed from the light, till the whole looked like the 
scenery of some fairy tale. 

The sunsets, as the year deepened into winter, grew, 
I thought, if possible, more and more glorious. The 
light sank behind mountains of gold and purple, and 
shot up its splendours, from beyond, on every bar and 
fleck of cloud, to the zenith. Then came the slow 
advance of night, with the day retreating from before 
it to the glorious gates of the west, at first in a flush of 
crimson, then in a flood of amber, till at last, with a 
lingering farewell, it left us in paler and paler green. 



102 Indian Summer. 

I have seen every tree turned into gold as I looked 
across the river, as the evening fell. Milman speaks 
in one of his poems, of the 'golden air of heaven/ 
Such sights as these sunsets make the image a reality, 
and almost involuntarily lead one, as he gazes on the 
wide glory that rests on all things, to think how 
beautiful the better world must be if this one be so 
lovely. 

The Indian summer came with the end of October 
and lasted about ten days, a good deal of rain having 
fallen just before. While it lasted, it was deliciously 
mild, like the finest April weather in England. A soft 
mist hung over the whole panorama round us, mellow- 
ing everything to a pecular spiritual beauty. The sun 
rose, and travelled through the day, and set, behind a 
veil of haze, through which it showed like a great crate 
of glowing embers. As it rose, the haze reddened 
higher and higher up the sky, till, at noon, the heavens 
were like the hollow of a vast half-transparent rose, 
shutting out the blue. It was like the dreamy days of 
Thomson's ' Castle of Indolence/ where everything 
invited to repose. You could look at the sun at any 
hour, and yet the view around was not destroyed, but 
rather made more lovely. What the cause of this 
phenomenon may be I have never been able to find 
out. One writer suggests one thing, and another 
something else 3 but it seems as if nobody knew the 
true reason of it. If I might venture a guess, I would 
say that perhaps it arises from the condensation of the 



Indian Summer. 



[03 



vapours of the earth by the first frosts, while the 
summer and autumn heats are yet great enough in the 
soil to cause them to rise in abundance. 

Both before and after the Indian summer the first 
unmistakeable heralds of winter visited us, in the 
shape of morning hoar-frost, which melted away as the 
day advanced. It was wonderfully beautiful to look at 
it, in its effects on the infinitely-varied colours of the 
leaves which still clung to the trees. Its silver dust, 
powdered over the golden yellow of some, and the 
bright-red, or dark-brown, or green of others, the 
minutest outline of each preserved, looked charming 
in the extreme. Then, not only the leaves, but the 
trunks, and branches, and lightest sprays, were crusted 
with the same snowy film, till, as far as the eye could 
reach, it seemed as if some magical transformation had 
happened in the night, and a mockery of nature had 
been moulded in white. But what shall I say of the 
scene when the sun came up in the east, to have his 
look at it as well as we ? What rainbow tints of every 
possible shade ! what diamond sparkling of millions of 
crystals at once ! It was like the gardens of Aladdin, 
with the trees bending under their wealth of rubies, 
and sapphires, and all things precious. But the 
spectacle was as short-lived as it was lovely. By noon, 
the last trace was gone. 

The autumnal rains are of great value to the farmers 
and the country generally, by filling the wells and 
natural reservoirs, so as to secure a plentiful supply of 



1 04 The Fall Rains and the Roads. 

water for winter, and thus they were welcome enough 
on this ground to most, though we, with the river at 
hand, could have very well done without them. But, 
in their effects on the roads, they were a cause of 
grief to all alike. Except near towns, the roads all 
through Canada were, in those days, what most of 
them are, even yet, only mud ; and hence you may 
judge their state after long-continued tropical rains. 
All I have said of our journey to the river in the early 
summer might be repeated of each returning fall. 
Men came to the house every day or two to borrow 
an axe or an auger, to extemporize some repair of 
their broken-down waggons or vehicles. One pitchy 
night I came upon two who were intensely busy, by 
the light of a lantern, mending a waggon, with the 
help of a saw, an auger, an axe, and a rope. Of 
course, I stopped to offer assistance, but I had come 
only in time to be too late, and was answered that my 
help was not wanted. ' All's right — there's no use 
making a fuss — Jim, take back them things where you 
got them, and let's go a-head.' As to thanks for my 
offer, it would have been extravagant to expect them. 
They had cobbled their vehicle, and, on Jim's return, 
were off into the darkness as coolly as if nothing had 
happened. The dangers of the roads are a regular 
part of the calculations of the back-country Canadians, 
to encounter which they carry an axe, a wrench, and 
a piece of rope, which are generally enough for the 
rude wheelwright surgery required. • It is amusing to 



The Fall Rains and the Roads. 105 

hear with what perfect indifference they treat mis- 
adventures which would totally disconcert an Old 
Countryman. I remember a man whom I met patch- 
ing up his light waggon — which is the name for a 
four-wheeled gig — setting me laughing at his account 
of his triumphs over all the accidents of travel. ' I 
never was stopped yet/ he went on to assure me. 
' Once I was in my buggy and the tire of one of the 
wheels came off without my noticing ; I ran back some 
miles to try if I could get it, but I couldn't find it. 
But I guess I never say die, so I took a rail and stuck 
it in below the lame corner, and I tell you we made 
the dust fly ! ' 

A little brick church had been built about two miles 
from us, some time before we came to the river, but 
the mud was a sore hindrance to such of the congre- 
gation as could not come by water. Any attempt at 
■ week-night meetings of any kind was, of course, out of 
the question. We were pretty nearly close prisoners 
till the frost should come to relieve us. 

As in many other cases, however, this first step 
towards cure was almost worse than the disease. The 
frost often came in bitter fierceness for some time 
before any snow fell, and, then, who shall sing in sad 
enough strains the state of the roads ? Imagine mile 
after mile of mud, first poached into a long honey- 
comb by the oxen and horses, and cut into longitu- 
dinal holes by the wheels, then frozen, in this state, in 
a night, into stone. I once had to ride nearly sixty 



106 The Fall Rains and the Roads. 

miles over such a set of pitfalls. My brother, Frederic, 
was with me, but he had slipped in the stable and 
sprained his shoulder so that I had almost to lift him 
into the saddle. He came with me to lead back my 
horse at the sixty miles' end, where the roads per- 
mitted the stage to run for my further journey. We 
were two days on the way, and such days. The ther- 
mometer was below zero, our breath froze on our eye- 
lashes every minute, land the horses had long icicles 
at their noses, and yet we could only stumble on at a 
slow walk, the horses picking their steps with the 
greatest difficulty, and every now and then coming 
down almost on their knees. Sometimes we got so 
cold we had to get off and walk with the bridles on 
our arms \ and then there was the getting Frederic 
mounted again. I thought we should never get to the 
end of the first day's ride. It got dark long before 
we reached it, and we were afraid to sit any longer on 
the horses, so that we finished it by groping in the 
pitchy darkness, as well as we could, for some miles. 

The first snow fell in November, and lay, that year, 
from that time until April. The climate has become 
much milder since, from the great extent of the clear- 
ings, I suppose, so that snow does not lie, now-a-days, 
as it did then, and does not begin for nearly a month 
later. I have often heard Canadians deploring the 
change in this respect, as, indeed, they well may in the 
rougher parts of the country, for the winter snow, by 
filling up the holes in the roads and freezing the wet 



The First Snow. 



107 



places., as well as by its smooth surface, enables them 
to bring heavy loads of all kinds to market, from 
places which are wholly shut up at other seasons, if 
they had the leisure to employ in that way, at any 
other, which they have not. The snow is consequently 
as welcome in Canada as the summer is elsewhere, 
and a deficiency of it is a heavy loss. When we first 
settled, the quantity that fell was often very great, and 
as none melted, except during the periodical thaw in 
January, the accumulation became quite formidable 
by spring. It was never so bad, however, by any 
means, as at Quebec, where the houses have flights of 
steps up to the doors to let folks always get in and 
out through the winter, the doors being put at high 
snow-mark, if I may so speak. I have sometimes 
seen the stumps quite hidden and the fences dwarfed 
to a very Lilliputian height \ but, of late years, there 
have been some winters when there has hardly been 
enough to cover the ground, and the wheat has in 
many parts been killed, to a large extent, by the frost 
and thaws, which it cannot stand when uncovered. 
People in Britain often make great mistakes about the 
appearance of Canada in winter, thinking, as I re- 
member we did, that we should have almost to get 
down to our houses through the snow for months 
together. The whole depth may often, now-a-days, 
in the open country, be measured by inches, though 
it still keeps up its old glory in the bush, and lies for 
months together, instead of melting off in a few days, 



108 Canada in Winter. 

as it very frequently does, round the towns and cities. 
I remember an account of the Canadian climate 
given by a very witty man, now dead, Dr Dunlop, of 
Lake Huron, as the report sent home respecting it by 
an Englishman to his friends, whom he informed, 
that for four months in the year you were up to 'the 
neck in mud \ for four more, you were either burned 
up by the heat or stung to death by mosquitoes, and, 
for the other four, if you managed to get your nose 
above the snow it was only to have it bitten off by 
the frost. All the evils thus arrayed are bad enough, 
but the writer's humour joined with his imagination 
in making an outrageous caricature when he spoke 
thus. A Frenchman, writing about England, would, 
perhaps, say as much against its climate, and, perhaps, 
with a nearer approach to truth. I remember travel- 
ling with one in the railway from Wolverhampton to 
London on a very bad day in winter, whose opinion 
of the English climate was, t cleemate, it's no clee- 
mate — it's only yellow fogue.' Robert Sou they, as 
true an Englishman as ever lived, in the delightful 
letters published in his Life, constantly abuses it in a 
most extraordinary way, and I suppose there are 
others who abuse that of every other country in 
which they chance to live. We can have nothing 
just as we would like it, and must always set the 
bright side over against the dark. For my part, I 
think that, though Canada has its charms at some 
seasons, and redeeming points in all, there is no place 



Climate i7i America. 109 

like dear Old England, in spite of its fogs and 
drizzle, and the colds they bring in their train. 

The question often rises respecting the climate in 
America, since it has grown so much milder in com- 
paratively few years, whether it will ever grow any- 
thing like our own in its range of cold and heat. 
That many countries have changed greatly within 
historical periods is certain. The climate of England, 
in the days of the Norman conquest, is thought by 
many to have been like that of Canada now. Horace 
hints at ice and snow being no strangers at Rome in 
the time of Augustus. Caesar led his army over the 
frozen Rhone; and, as to Germany, the description 
of its climate in Tacitus is fit to make one shiver. 
But we have, unfortunately, an opportunity afforded 
us by the case of New England, of seeing that two 
hundred years' occupation of an American province, 
though it may lessen the quantity of snow, has no 
effect in tempering the severity of the cold in winter, 
or abating the heat in summer. Connecticut and 
Massachusetts are as cold as Canada, if not colder, 
and yet they are long-settled countries. The great 
icy continent to the north forbids the hope of Canada 
ever being, in any strict sense of the term, temperate. 
Even in the open prairies of Wisconsin and Iowa the 
blasts that sweep from the awful Arctic deserts are 
keen beyond the conception of those who never felt 
them. It is the fact of Britain being an island that 
has made the change in its case, the wind that blows 



no A Winter Landscape. 

over the sea being always much cooler in summer 
and warmer in winter than that which blows over 
land. 

I have spoken of the beautiful effect of the hoar- 
frost on the forest ; that of the snow is equally striking. 
It is wonderful how much manages to get itself heaped 
up on the broad branches of pines and cedars, and even 
on the bare limbs and twigs of other trees, making 
the landscape look most amazingly wintry. But I 
don't think any one in Canada ever heard of such a 
quantity lodging on them as to make such an occur- 
rence as Mrs Mary Somerville quotes from some 
traveller in her ' Physical Geography/ where she tells 
us that the weight of it on the broad fronds of the 
pine-trees is so great, that, when the wind rises and 
sways them to and fro, they often tumble against each 
other with such force as to overthrow great numbers, 
over large tracts of country. Such ' ice-storms,' as she 
calls them, I never heard of, nor did I ever meet with 
any one who did. Indeed, I rather think them im- 
possible, from the mere fact that, though the force with 
which the first tree struck the second might be enough 
to throw it down, that of the second would be much 
weaker on a third, and thus the destruction would 
cease almost at once, instead of spreading far and wide. 
It must be some curious and incorrect version of the 
terrible tornadoes of summer which she has quoted. 

The snow itself used to give me constant pleasure 
in looking at it minutely. The beautiful shapes you 



Snow Crystals. 1 1 1 

see in the kaleidoscope are not more wonderful than 
those of the crystals of which it was made up. Stars, 
crosses, diamonds, and I know not what other shapes, 
as large almost as a shilling, shone round you in mil- 
lions when the sun sent his glittering light on them, 
except in very cold weather, for then the snow was only 
a dry powder. What a wonderful thing crystalliza- 
tion is ! If you think of it for a moment you will be 
amazed and awed, for it brings us as if face to face 
with God. How is it that the particles of snow range 
themselves in the most perfect forms, far more beau- 
tifully than any jeweller could make the most costly 
ornament? There is never an error — never anything 
like a failure. Every atom of the dead, cold snow 
has a law impressed on it by God, by which it takes 
its proper place in building up those fairy spangles 
and jewels. Can anything be more exquisite than 
the crystals we find in the rocks ? Yet they are built 
up of atoms too small for even the microscope to 
detect, and are always exactly the same shape in the 
same kind of crystal. Philosophers think that the 
particles of each kind of crystal have each the per- 
fect shape which the whole crystal assumes ; but if this 
be so, it makes the matter still more wonderful, for 
what shall we think of atoms, which no magnifying 
power can make visible, being carved and pierced and 
fretted into the most lovely shapes and patterns ? The 
great power of God is, I think, shown even more 
wonderfully in the smallest than in the largest of His 



H2 Minute Perfection of God's Works. 

works. The miracles of His creative skill are lavished 
almost more profusely on its least than on its larger 
productions, in animate as well as inanimate nature. 
The crystalline lens of a cod's eye — that is, the central 
hard part of it, which is a very little larger than a pea, 
and is quite transparent — was long thought to have no 
special wonders in its structure ; but the microscope 
has shown latterly that what appeared a mere piece of 
hard jelly is made up of five millions of distinct 
fibres, which are locked into each other by sixty-two 
thousand millions of teeth ! The grasshopper has 
two hundred and seventy horny teeth, set in rows in 
its gizzard. A quarto volume has been written on 
the anatomy of the earth-worm. At Bilin, in Hun- 
gary, .there is a kind of stone which the great micro- 
scopist — or histologist, as the phrase sometimes is — 
Dr Ehrenberg, has found to consist, nearly altogether, 
of creatures so small that three hundred and thirty 
millions of them make a piece only about twice the 
size of one of the dice used in backgammon, and yet 
each of these creatures is covered with a coat of mail 
delicately carved all over. What can be more lovely 
than ' the way in which the little feathers are laid on 
a butterfly's wing in such charming spots and bars of 
different colours ? I was looking some time since at 
a butterfly, which was of the most perfect azure blue 
when you looked down on it, but changed, when you 
saw it sideways, from one shade to another, and asked 
an entomologist how it was it had so many different 



Minute Perfection of God's Works. 113 

tints., taking nearly every colour by turns. It is by 
the wonderful arrangement of the feathers, it seems, 
all this is done, the way in which they are laid on 
the wings being such as to break the rays of light 
into all these colours, according to the angle at which 
it is held to the eye. How wonderful the Being 
whose very smallest works are so perfect ! 

The snow in cold countries is very different in 
appearance at different times, as I have already in- 
timated. In comparatively mild weather it falls and 
lies in large soft flakes ; but in very cold weather it 
comes down almost in powder, and crackles below 
the feet at each step. The first showers seldom lie, the 
air being too warm as yet ; indeed, warm, comfort- 
able days sometimes continue quite late. I re- 
member one November when we were without fires, 
even in the middle of it, for some days together ; 
and in one extraordinary December, ploughs were 
actually going on Christmas-day; but this was as 
great a wonder as a Canadian frost would be in 
England. The first winter, enough fell in November 
to cover all the stumps in our field, which we did 
not see again for many weeks. The depth of the 
snow must thus have been at least a yard. In the 
woods, there was only a dead level of snow, instead of 
the rough flooring of fallen logs and broken branches. 
At first we could not stir through it for the depth, 
and had to make a path to the barn and to the road ; 
but after a time a thaw came for a day or so, and 



ii4 Deer-shooting. 

some rain fell, and then the surface of the snow froze 
so firmly that even the oxen could walk over it in 
any direction without breaking through. 

The falling of the snow was a great time for the 
sportsmen of our household, for the deer were then 
most easily killed, the snow, while soft, showing their 
tracks, and also making them less timid, by forcing 
them to seek far and near for their food. Our rifles 
were, consequently, put in the best order as soon as 
the ground was white ; and each of us saw, in im- 
agination, whole herds of stags which he had brought 
down. Frederic, who had been left in Toronto, hav- 
ing suffered in health by the confinement of his office, 
had given it up, and had joined us some time before 
this, so that there were now five of us, besides my 
two sisters. We had three rifles and one gun, the 
rifle which David carried being an especially good 
one. But he was the poorest shot of us all, and 
Robert was too nervous to be sure of his aim ; but 
Henry was as cool before a stag as if it had been 
a rabbit. We were all in a state of great eagerness 
to commence, and had already looked out white 
clothes to put on over our ordinary suit, that we 
might be more like the snow ; an extra supply of 
bullets and powder had been put into our pouches 
and flasks \ and we had pestered every one, for 
weeks before, with every possible question as to what 
we were to do when we set out. On the eventful 
day, my brothers, Robert, Henry, and David, got 



Deer-shooting. 115 

their rifles on their shoulders immediately after 
breakfast, and, having determined on taking each a 
different road, struck into the woods as each thought 
best. Shortly before dark we heard David's voice 
in the clearing, and, soon after, Robert and Henry 
made their appearance. We were all out in a 
moment to see what they had got, but found them 
by no means disposed to be talkative about their 
adventures. We gradually learned, however, that 
they had all had a hard day's trudge through the 
rough wearisome woods, and that Robert had had 
one good chance through the day, but was so flus- 
tered when the deer sprang away through the trees 
that he could not raise his rifle in time, and had 
fired rather at where it had been than at where it 
was. David declared that he had walked forty 
miles, he supposed, and had seen nothing, though if 
he had only seen as much as a buck's tail he was 
sure he would have brought it down. Henry said 
that, do his best, he could not get near enough, what 
with the wind and the crackling of something or 
other. The fact was that they were raw hands, and 
needed some training, and had had to suffer the 
usual penalty of over-confidence, in reaping only 
disappointment. They felt this indeed so much, that 
it was some time before they would venture out 
alone again, preferring to accompany an old hunter 
who lived near us, until they had caught the art 
from him. Henry went out with an Indian, also, 



1 1 6 Deer- shooting. 



^ ' 



once, and thus gradually became able to manage 
by himself. He had the honour of killing the first 
deer, and setting up the trophy of its horns. He had 
walked for hours, thinking every liftle while he saw 
something through the trees, but had been disap- 
pointed, until towards midday, when, at last, he came 
upon a couple browsing on the tender tips of the 
brush, at a long distance from him. Then came the 
hardest part of the day's work, to get within shot of 
them without letting them hear or smell him. He 
had to dodge from tree to tree, and would look out 
every minute to see if they were still there. Several 
times the buck pricked its ears, and looked all round 
it, as if about to run oif, making him almost hold his 
breath with anxiety lest it should do so ; but, at last, 
he got near enough, and taking a good aim at it from 
behind a tree, drew the trigger. A spring forward, 
and a visible momentary quiver, showed that he had 
hit it i but it did not immediately fall, but ran off 
with the other through the woods. Instantly dashing 
out to the spot where it had stood, Henry followed 
its track, aided by the blood which every here and 
there lay on the snow. He thought at first he would 
come up with it in a few hundred yards, but it led 
him a long weary chase of nearly two miles before he 
got within sight of it. It had continued to run until 
weakness from the loss of blood had overpowered it, 
and it lay quite dead when Henry reached it. It was 
too great a weight for him to think of carrying home 




hexry's first stag. 



Rage 116. 



Dcer-shootinz. 



117 



himself, so that he determined to cut it up, and hang 
the pieces on the neighbouring branches till he could 
come back next morning with some of us and fetch 
them. Copying the example of the old hunter whom 
he had made his model, he had taken a long knife 
and a small axe with him; and, after cutting the 
throat to let off what blood still remained, the creature 
being still warm, he was not very long of stripping 
it of its skin and hanging up its dismembered body, 
for preservation from the wolves through the night. 
This done, he made the best of his way home to tell 
us his achievement. 

Next day, w r e had a grand banquet on venison- 
steaks, fried with ham, and potatoes in abundance; 
and a better dish I think I never tasted. Venison 
pie, and soup, for days after, furnished quite a treat in 
the house. 

A few days after this, while the winter was hardly 
as yet fairly begun, David and Henry had gone out 
to their work on the edge of the woods, when a deer, 
feeding close to them, lifted up its head, and, looking 
at them, turned slowly away. They were back to 
the house in a moment for their rifles, and sallied 
forth after it, following its track to the edge of the 
creek on our lot, w T here it had evidently crossed on 
the ice. David reached the bank first ; and, naturally 
enough, thinking that ice which bore up a large deer 
would bear him up, stepped on it to continue the 
pursuit. But he had forgotten that the deer had 



1 1 8 Deer-shooting. 

four legs, and thus pressed comparatively little on 
any one part, whereas his whole weight was on one 
spot, and he had only reached the middle when in he 
went, in a moment, up to his middle in the freezing 
water. The ducking was quite enough to cool his 
ardour for that day, so that we had him back to 
change his clothes as soon as he could get out of his 
bath and reach the house. Henry got over the 
stream on a log, and followed the track for some dis- 
tance farther, but gave up the chase on finding it 
likely to be unavailing. 

When we first came to live on the river, the deer 
were very numerous. One day in the first winter 
Robert saw a whole herd of them, of some eight or 
ten, feeding close to the house, among our cattle, on 
some browse which had been felled for them. Browse, 
I may say, is the Canadian word for the tender twigs 
of trees, which are so much liked by the oxen and 
cows, and even by the horses, that we used to cut 
down a number of trees, and leave them with the 
branches on them, for the benefit of our four-footed 
retainers. On seeing so grand a chance of bagging 
two deer at a shot, Robert rushed in for his rifle at 
once, but before he had got it loaded, although he 
flustered through the process with incredible haste, 
and had us all running to bring him powder, ball, 
and wadding, the prey had scented danger, and were 
gone. 

We had quite an excitement one day by the cry 



Deer-shooting. 1 1 9 

that a stag was swimming across the river. On look- 
ing up the stream, there he was, sure enough, with 
his noble horns and his head out of the water, doing 
his best to reach the opposite shore. In a few 
minutes we saw John Courtenay and his boys pad- 
dling off in hot haste, in their canoe, in pursuit. 
Every stroke flashed in the light, and the little craft 
skimmed the calm water like an arrow. They were 
soon very close to the great creature, which flew 
faster than ever, and then a bullet from Courtenay's 
rifle ended the chase in a moment. The stag 
was instantly seized to prevent its sinking, and 
dragged off to the shore by a rope tied round its 
antlers. 

Some people are cruel enough to kill deer in the 
spring, when their young are with them, and even to 
kill the young themselves, though they are worth 
very little when got. One of the neighbours one 
day wounded a fawn which was following its mother, 
and as usual ran up to secure and kill it. But to 
his astonishment, the maternal affection of the doe 
had s.o overcome its timidity, that, instead of fleeing 
the moment it heard the shot, it would not leave its 
poor bleeding young one, but turned on him, and 
made such vigorous rushes towards him, again and 
again, that it was only by making all kinds of noise 
he could frighten her far enough back to let him get 
hold of the fawn at last. I wish that instead of 
merely running at him, the loving-hearted creature 



120 Useless Crtcelty. 

had given him a good hard butt with her head ; it 
would have served him right for such cruelty. Taking 
away life is only justifiable, I think, when there is 
some other end than mere amusement in view. To 
find happiness in destroying that of other living 
beings is a very unworthy enjoyment, when one 
comes to think of it. To go out, as I have seen both 
men and boys do, to shoot the sweet little singing 
birds in the hedges, or the lark' when he is flut- 
tering down, after having filled the air with music, 
or the slow-flying seagulls, as they sail heavily near 
the shore, can only give a pleasure so long as those 
who indulge in it do not reflect on its cruelty. I 
remember, when a boy, being often very much struck 
with this, but, more especially, once, when a boy shot 
a male thrush, as it was bringing home a little worm 
for its young ones, which would very likely die when 
their father was killed \ and, once, when a man shot a 
seagull, which fell far out on the water, from which 
it would often try in vain to rise, but where it would 
have to float, helpless and in pain, till released by 
death. 

Continued persecution, by every one, at all seasons, 
has nearly banished the deer from all the settled 
parts of Canada, for years back. There are game 
laws now, however, fixing a time, within which, to 
destroy them is punishable, and it is to be hoped 
they may do some good. But the rifle is of use only 
for amusement in all the older districts, and if you 



Useless Cruelty. 121 

want to get sport like that of old times you must go 
to the frontier townships, where everything is yet 
almost in a state of nature. 

The Indians were harder on every kind of game, 
and still are so, than even the white settlers. They 
have long ago laid aside the bow and arrow of their 
ancestors, in every part of Canada, and availed them- 
selves of the more deadly power of firearms. As 
they have nothing whatever to do most of their time, 
and as the flesh of deer is, at once, food, and a means 
of getting other things, by bartering it for them, and 
as it suits their natural taste, they used to be, and 
still are, what may be called hunters by profession. 
One Indian and his son, who had built their wigwam 
on our lot, in the first years of our settlement, killed 
in one winter, in about three weeks, no fewer than 
forty deer, but they spoiled everything for the rest 
of the season, as those that escaped them became so 
terrified that they fled to some other part. 

The species of deer common in Canada is the Vir- 
ginian, and, though not so large as some others, their 
long, open ears, and graceful tails — longer than those 
of some other kinds, and inclining to be bushy — give 
them a very attractive appearance. The most curious 
thing about them, as about other deer, was the growth 
and casting of the stags' horns. It is not till the 
spring of the second year that the first pair begin to 
make their appearance, the first sign of their coming 
being a swelling of the skin over the spots from 



122 Shedding of the Stags Horns. 

which they are to rise. The antlers are now bud- 
ding; for on these spots are the footstalks from which 
they are to spring, and the arteries are beginning to 
deposit on them, particle by particle, with great ra- 
pidity, the bony matter of which the horns are com- 
posed. As the antlers grow, the skin still stretches 
over them, and continues to do so, till they have 
reached their full size, and have become quite hard 
and solid, and forms a beautiful velvet covering, 
which is, in reality, underneath, nothing but a great 
tissue of blood-vessels for supplying the necessary 
circulation. The arteries which run up from the 
head, through it, are, meanwhile, so large, that they 
make furrows on the soft horns underneath \ and it 
is these that leave the deeper marks on the horns 
when hard. When the antlers are full-grown they 
look very curious while the velvet is still over them, 
and are so tender that the deer can, as yet, make no 
use of them. It must therefore be removed, but not 
too suddenly, lest the quantity of blood flowing 
through such an extent of skin should be turned to 
the brain or some internal organ, and death be the 
result. Danger is prevented, and the end at the 
same time accomplished, by a rough ring of bone 
being now deposited round the base of the horns 
where they join the footstalk, notches being left in it, 
through which the arteries still pass. Gradually, 
however, these openings are contracted by fresh bone 
being formed round their edges, till at length the 



Shedding of the Slag's Horns. 1 23 

arteries are compressed as by a ligature, and the cir- 
culation effectually stopped. The velvet now dies, 
for want of the vital fluid, and peels off, the deer 
helping to get it off by rubbing its horns against the 
trees. It was by noticing this process of stopping 
the arteries in the antlers of stags, that John Hunter, 
the great anatomist, first conceived the plan of re- 
ducing the great swellings of the arteries in human 
beings which are called aneurisms, by tying them up 
— a mode which, in certain cases, is found quite 
effectual. The highest thoughts of genius are thus 
frequently only new applications of principles and 
modes of operation which God has established in the 
humblest orders of nature, from the beginning of the 
world. Indeed they are always so, for we cannot 
create any absolutely new conception, but must be 
contented to read and apply wisely the teachings 
furnished by all things around us. When the velvet 
is gone, the horns are at last perfect, and the stag 
bears them proudly, and uses them fiercely in his 
battles with his rivals. But the cutting off the arte- 
ries makes them no longer a part of the general sys- 
tem of the animal. Thejp are, thenceforth, only held 
on to the footstalks by their having grown from them, 
and, hence, each spring, when a new pair begin to 
swell up from beneath, the old ones are pushed off 
and fall away, to make room for others. It is curious 
to think that such great things as full-grown stags' 
horns drop off and are renewed every year; but so 



1 24 Shedding of the Stags Horns. 

it is. Beginning with the single horn of the first 
season, they grow so much larger each season till the 
seventh, when they reach their greatest size. But, 
after all, is it any more wonderful that their horns 
should grow once a-year, than that our hair should 
grow all the time ? And is a horn anything more 
than hair stuck together ? 



**5 




CHAPTER VII. 

Wolves — My adventure with a bear — Court enay's cow and the 
wolves — A fright in the woods by night — The river freezes 
— Our winter fires — Cold, cold, cold ! — A winter's journey 
— Sleighing — Winter mufflings — Accidents through intense 
cold. 

HE wolves used to favour us by howling at 
nights, close at hand, till the sound 
made one miserable. We had five sheep 
destroyed in the barn-yard on one of 
these occasions, nothing being done to them beyond 
tearing the throats open and drinking the blood. 
Perhaps the wolves had been disturbed at their feast. 
I never heard of any one being killed by them, but 
they sometimes put benighted travellers in danger. 
One night, Henry was coming home from a neighbour's, 
in the bright moonlight, and had almost reached our 
clearing, when, to his horror, he heard the cry of some 
wolves behind him, and, feeling sure they wished to 
make their supper at his expense, he made off, with 
the fastest heels he could, to a tree that stood by itself, 
and was easily climbed. Into this he got just in time 
to save himself, for the wolves were already at the foot 
of it, whfen he had made good his seat across a bough. 



126 Wolves. 

The night was fearfully cold, and he must soon 
have frozen to death had he not, providentially, been 
so near the house. As it was, his loud whistling for 
the dogs, and his shouts, were, fortunately, heard, and • 
some of us sallying out, he was delivered from his 
perilous position. Wolves are much scarcer now, 
however, I am thankful to say, owing in part, no 
doubt, to a reward of two sovereigns which is offered 
by Government for every head brought in. In the 
regions north of Canada they seem to abound, and 
even on the shores of the Arctic Ocean they are 
found in great numbers. Sir John Franklin, in one 
of his earlier journeys, often came upon the remains 
of deer which had been hemmed in by them and 
driven over precipices. ' Whilst the deer are quietly 
grazing/ says he, 'the wolves assemble in great 
numbers, and, forming a deep crescent, creep slowly 
towards the herd, so as not to alarm them much at 
first; but when they perceive that they have fairly 
hemmed in the unsuspecting creatures, and cut off 
their retreat across the plain, they move more 
quickly, and with hideous yells terrify their prey 
and urge them to flight by the only open way, which 
is towards the precipice, appearing to know that 
when the herd is at full speed it is easily driven over 
the cliffs, the rear-most urging on those that are 
before. The wolves then descend at leisure and 
feed on the mangled carcasses/ 

There were some bears in the woods, tyit they 



Courtenays Cow and the Wolves. 127 

did not trouble us. My sister Margaret and I were 
the only two of our family who had an adventure 
with one, and that ended in a fright. It was in the 
summer-time, and we had strolled out into the woods 
to amuse ourselves with picking the wild berries, and 
gathering flowers. I had climbed to the top of the 
upturned root of a tree, the earth on which was 
thick with fruit, and my sister was at a short dis- 
tance behind. Having just got up, I chanced to 
turn round and look down, when, lo ! there stood a 
bear busy at the raspberries, which he seemed to 
like as much as we did. You may be certain that 
the first sight of it was enough. I sprang down in 
an instant, and, shouting to my sister that there was a 
bear behind the tree, we, both, made off homewards 
with a speed which astonished even ourselves. The 
poor brute never offered to disturb us, though he 
might have made a meal of either of us had he 
chosen, for I don't think we could have run had we 
seen him really after us. 

I had forgotten a story about the wolves which 
happened a year or two after our first settling. John 
Courtenay had a cow which fell sick, and was lying 
in the field, after night, in the winter-time, very likely 
without any one missing it, or, if they missed it, 
without their knowing where to find it in the dark. 
The wolves, however, did not overlook it, for, next 
morning, poor Cowslip was found killed by them, and 
its carcass having been left, the family not liking to use 



128 A Fright in the Woods by Night. 

it under the circumstances, they held high carnival 
over it, night after night, till the bones were picked 
clean. This happened quite close to the house. 

But if there were not many bears and wolves to 
be seen, we were not the less afraid they would 
pounce on us, when, by any chance, we should 
happen to be coming through the woods after dark. 
I remember a young friend and myself being half 
frightened in this way one summer evening when 
there chanced to be no moon, and we had to walk 
home, through the great gloomy forest, when it was 
pitch dark. Before starting, we were furnished with 
a number of long slips of the bark of the hickory- 
tree, which is very inflammable, and, having each 
lighted one, we sallied out on our journey. I shall 
never forget the wild look of everything in the 
flickering light, the circle of darkness closing in 
round us at a very short distance. But on we went, 
along the winding path, hither and thither, among 
the trees. Suddenly an unearthly sound broke from 
one side, a sort of screech, which was repeated again 
and again. We took it for granted some bear and 
her young ones were at hand, but, where, it seemed 
impossible for us to discover. How could we run 
in such darkness over such a path, with lights to 
carry? Both of us stood still to listen. Again 
came the 'hoo, hoo, hoo;' and I assure you it 
sounded very loud in the still forest. But, though 
terrible to me, I noticed that, when distinctly caught, 



The River Freezes. 129 

it ceased to alarm my comrade. ' It's only a great 
owl up in the tree there — what's the use of being 
frightened ? ' he broke out ; yet he had been as much 
so as myself, the moment before. However, we now 
made up for our panic by a hearty laugh, and went 
on in quietness to the house. 

Towards the end of December the river froze. 
This was, in great part, caused by large blocks of 
ice floating down from Lake Superior, and getting 
caught on the banks, as they went past, by the ice 
already formed there. For one to touch another, 
was to make them adhere for the rest of the winter, 
and, thus, in a very short time after it had begun, 
the whole surface was as solid as a stone. We had 
now to cut a hole every morning with the axe, 
through the ice, to let the cattle drink, and to get 
water for the house, and cold work it was. The 
cattle came down themselves, but when, a year or 
two afterwards, we got horses, they had to be led 
twice a day. It was very often my task to take 
them. Riding was out of the question, from the 
steepness of the bank, and the way in which their 
feet balled with the snow, so I used to sally out for 
them in a thick great-coat, with the ears of my cap 
carefully tied down, to prevent frostbites ; a thick 
worsted cravat round my neck, and thick mitts on 
my hands. . The floor of the stable was, invariably, 
a sheet of ice, and over this I had to get out the two 
horses, letting the one out over the icy slope ;at the 
9 



130 Our Whiter Fires, 

door, and then holding the halter till the second one 
had slid past me, when, having closed the door, with 
hands like the snow, from having had to loosen the 
halters, I went down with them. When the wind 
was from the north they were white in a step or 
two, with their breath frozen on their chests and 
sides, the cold making it like smoke as it left their 
nostrils. Of course they w r ere in no hurry, and 
would put their tails to the wind and drink a 
minute, and then lift up their heads and look round 
them at their leisure, as if it were June. By the 
time they were done, their mouths and chins were 
often coated with ice, long icicles hanging from the 
hair all round. Right glad was I when at last I had 
them fairly back again, and had knocked out the 
balls of snow from their shoes, to let them stand 
firm. 

The cold did not last all the time, else we could 
never have endured it. There would be two or 
three days of hard frost, and then it would come 
milder for two or three more : but the mildest, 
except when it was a thaw, in January, were very 
much colder than any that are common in England, 
and as to the coldest, what shall I say they were 
like ? The sky was as bright and clear as can be 
imagined, the snow crackled under foot, and the 
wind, when there was any, cut the skin like a razor. 
Indoors, the fire in the kitchen was enough to heat a 
large kail in a more temperate climate. It was never 



Cold, cold, cold! 131 

allowed to go out, the last thing at night being to 
roll a huge back-log, as they called it, into the fire- 
place, with hand-spokes, two of us sometimes having 
to help to get it into its place. It was simply a cut 
of a tree, about four feet long, and of various thick- 
nesses. The two dog-irons having been drawn out, 
and the embers heaped close to this giant, a number 
of thinner logs, whole and in parts, were then laid 
above them, and the fire was ' gathered ' for the 
night. By day, what with another huge back-log to 
replace the one burned up in the night, and a great 
bank of other smaller i sticks ' in front and over it, 
I think there was often half a cart-load blazing at a 
time. In fact, the only measure of the quantity was 
the size of the huge chimney, for the wood cost 
nothing except the trouble of cutting and bringing it 
to the house. It was grand to sit at night before the 
roaring mountain of fire and forget the cold outside \ 
but it was a frightful thing to dress in the morning, 
in the bitter cold of the bed-rooms, with the windows 
thick with frost, and the water frozen solid at your side. 
If you touched a tumbler of water with your tooth- 
brush it would often freeze in a moment, and the 
water in the basin sometimes froze round the edges 
while we were washing. The tears would come out of 
our eyes, and freeze on our cheeks as they rolled 
down. The towels were regularly frozen like a board, 
if they had been at all damp. Water, brought in over- 
night in buckets, and put as close to the fire as 



132 Cold, cold, cold ! 

possible, had to be broken with an axe in the morning. 
The bread, for long after we went to the river, till we 
got a new house, was like a stone for hardness, and 
sparkled with the ice in it. The milk froze on the way 
from the barn to the house, and even while they were 
milking. If you went out, your eyelashes froze 
together every moment with your breath on them, and 
my brothers' whiskers were always white with frozen 
breath when they came in. Beef and everything of the 
kind, were frozen solid for months together, and, when 
a piece was wanted, it had to be sawn off and put in 
cold water overnight to thaw it, or hung up in the house. 
I have known beef that had been on for hours taken out 
almost raw, from not having been thawed beforehand. 
One of the coldest nights I remember happened once 
when I was from home. I was to sleep at the house 
of a magistrate in the village, and had gone with a 
minister who was travelling for the British and Foreign 
Bible Society to attend a meeting he had appointed* 
It was held in a wooden schoolhouse, with three 
windows on each side, and a single storey high. There 
was a stove at the end nearest the door which opened 
into the room ; the pipe of it was carried up to near 
the roof, and then led along the room to a chimney at 
the opposite end. The audience consisted of seven or 
eight men and boys, though the night was magnificent, 
the stars hanging from the dark blue like sparkling 
globes of light. The cold, in fact, was so intense. that 
nobody would venture out. When I got in, I found 



Cold, cold, cold ! 133 

the congregation huddled round the stove, which one 
of them, seated in front of it, was assiduously stuffing 
with wood, as often as the smallest chance offered of 
his being able to add to its contents. The stove itself 
was as red as the fire inside of it, and the pipe, for 
more than a yard up, was the same ; but our backs 
were wretchedly cold, notwithstanding, though we sat 
within a few inches of the glowing iron. As to the 
windows, the rime on them never thought of melting, 
but lay thick and hard as ever. How the unfortunate 
speaker bore his place at the master's desk at the far 
end I know not. He had only one arm, indeed, but 
the hand of the other was kept deeply bedded in his 
pocket all the time. We were both to sleep at the 
same house, and therefore returned together, and 
after supper were shown into a double-bedded room 
with a painted floor, and a great stove in the middle. 
A delightful roar up the pipe promised comfort for 
the night, but alas ! in a few minutes it died away, 
the fire having been made of chips instead of sub- 
stantial billets. Next morning on waking, looking 
over to Mr Thompson, I expressed a hope that he had 
rested well through the night. 

* Rested ! ' said he ; ' I thawed a piece my own 
size last night when I first got in, and have lain in it 
all night as if it had been my coffin. I daren't put 
out my leg or my hand ; it was like ice up to my 
body/ 

One winter I had a dreadful journey of about two 



134 A Winter's ydurney. 

hundred miles. We started in the stage, which was 
an open rough waggon, at seven o'clock at night, the 
roads not as yet permitting sleighs. It was in the 
first week of January. I had on two great-coats, but 
ther^ were no buffalo robes to lay over the knees, 
though the stage should have provided them. All 
that dreadful dark night I had to sit there, while the 
horses stumbled on at a walk, and the waggon bumped 
on the frozen clods most dreadfully. The second 
day's ride was much better, that part of the road 
being smoother; but the next day and night — what 
shall I say of them? I began in a covered sleigh, 
some time in the forenoon, the distance being seventy 
miles. There was another person in it besides my- 
self. Off we started at a good pace, but sucli was 
the roughness of the road, up one wave of frozen 
earth and snow, and down another, that both of us 
were thoroughly sea-sick in a short time. Each took 
possession of a window, and getting the head in again 
was out of the question till the sickness fairly spent 
itself. Meanwhile, there was a large high wooden 
box in the sleigh between us, and we had to keep a 
hand a-piece on it, lest it should take us at unawares, 
and make a descent on our legs or backs. After a 
time, the covered sleigh was exchanged for an open 
one — a great heavy farmer's affair, a mere long box 
upon runners. To add to our troubles, they put a 
great black horse, as one of the two to draw us, 
which was so wild and fierce that I have always 



Sleighing. 135 

thought it must have been mad. It was now dark 
night, and there were again no buffalo robes, and 
the thermometer far below zero. How we stood it 
I know not. My feet were like ice, and incessant 
motion of both them and my arms seemed all that 
could keep me from freezing. But away the black 
wretch tore, the driver pulling him back as he could, 
but in vain. At last, at two or three in the morning, 
bang went the sleigh against some stump, or huge 
lump of frozen mud, and — broke down. ' You'll have 
to get out, gentlemen,' said the driver. 'You had 
better w r alk on to the first house, and I'll go before 
you and borrow a sleigh.' Here then we were, turned 
out to stumble over a chaos of holes and hillocks for 
nearly two miles, in darkness, and in such a night ! 
I don't know how long we were, but we reached a 
wayside inn at last, where the driver borrowed what 
he could get to carry us and the mails to the journey's 
end, and having gone back for the bags and his 
parcels, and that horrid box, to where he had left the 
broken vehicle at the roadside, he reappeared after a 
time, and we finished our journey, tired and cold 
enough, a little before daylight. 

The amount of suffering from the cold, seldom, 
however, reaches any painful extent \ indeed, you 
will hear people say, on every hand, that they posi- 
tively like it, except when it is stormy, or when the 
wind blows very keenly. Nor does it hinder work 
of any kind, where there is exercise enough. You 



136 Winter Mufflings. 

may see men chopping in the forest in terribly cold 
days, with their jackets off, the swinging of the arms 
making them disagreeably hot in spite of the weather. 
Sleighing is, moreover, the great winter amusement 
of the Canadian, who seems never so pleased as when 
driving fast in a i cutter,' with the jingling bells on 
the horse's neck making music as it goes. But, for 
my part, I could never bear sitting with my face to 
the wind, while I was dragged through it at the rate 
of ten miles an hour, with the thermometer below 
zero. All the mufflings you can put on won't protect 
the cheeks or the eyes, and the hands get intolerably 
cold holding the reins. Indeed, the precautions taken 
by those who have much travelling about in winter 
show that, to those less fully prepared, there must be 
suffering as well as enjoyment. Our doctor's outfit 
for his winter practice used to amuse me. He had, 
first, a huge otter fur cap, with ears ; next, over his 
great-coat, the skin of a buffalo made into a coat, 
with the hairy side out, and reaching to his feet ; his 
feet were cased in mocassins, which came over his 
boots and tied round the ankles ; a pair of great hose 
reached up his thighs ; his hands were muffied in 
huge fur gauntlets reaching half-way to his elbow ; 
and when he took his seat in his sleigh with all this 
wrapping, he sat down on a buffalo-skin spread over 
the seat, and stretching down over the bottom, while 
another was tucked in over him, his feet resting on 
the lower edge of it to keep out every breath of air ; 



Accidents through Intense Cold. 137 

and, in addition, he always had hot bricks put inside 
on starting, and re-heated them every short while. 
No wonder he used to say that he felt quite comfort- 
able. He had clothes and furs enough on him for 
Greenland. In spite of all this, however, I remember 
his driving back, home, in great haste one day, with 
his wife and child, and found that the face of the 
infant had been partially frozen in a ride of four or 
hve miles. Cases of death from the excessive cold 
are not infrequent. A drunken man, falling on the 
road, is certain to die if not speedily found. A poor 
Indian was frozen to death on the river in this way 
a short time after we came. Eut even the most 
sober people are sometimes destroyed by the awful 
intensity of the cold. I knew a young widow who 
had lost her husband in this way. He had gone to 
town in his sleigh, one Christmas, on business, and 
was returning, when he felt very cold, and turned 
aside to heat himself at a farm-house. Poor fellow ! 
he was already so frozen that he died shortly after 
coming to the fire. This last winter, a farmer and 
his daughter were driving in from the country to 
Toronto, and, naturally enough, said little to each 
other, not caring to expose their faces ; but when 
they had reached the city and should have alighted, 
to her horror the daughter found that her father was 
stone dead, frozen at her side by the way. At 
Christmas there are a great many shooting-matches, 
at which whoever kills most pigeons, let loose from a 



138 Accidents through Intense Cold. 

trap, at a certain distance, wins a turkey. I was one 
day riding past one of these, and noticed a group of 
spectators standing round, but thought no more of it, 
till, next morning, I learned that, when the match was 
done and the people dispersed, a boy was seen who 
continued to stand still on the vacant ground, and, on 
going up to him, it was found that he had been frozen 
stiff, and was stone dead. A minister once told me 
that he had been benighted on a' lonely road in the 
depth of the winter and could get on no further, and, 
for a time, hardly knew what to do. At last he re- 
solved to take out his horse, and, after tying its two 
fore legs together, let it seek what it could for itself 
till morning, while he himself commenced walking 
round a great tree that was near, and continued doing 
so, without resting, till the next morning. Had he 
sat down, he would have fallen asleep ; and if he had 
slept, he would certainly have died. My brother 
Henry, who, after a time, turned to the study of me- 
dicine, and has risen to be a professor in one of the 
colleges, took me one day to the hospital with him, 
and, turning into one of the wards, walked up to the 
bed of a young man. Lifting up the bottom of the 
clothes, he told me to look ; and, — what a sight ! 
Both the feet had been frozen off at the ancle, 
and the red stumps were slowly healing. A poor 
man called, once, begging, whose fingers were all 
gone. He had walked some miles without gloves, 
and had known nothing about how to manage frozen 



Accidents through Intense Cold. 139 

limbs ; his fingers had frozen, had been neglected, and 
had mortified, till at last such as did not drop off were 
pulled out, he told me, with pincers, being utterly rotten 
at the joints. I know a young man, a law student, 
whose fingers are mere bone and skin : he was snow- 
balling, and paid the penalty in the virtual destruction 
of his hands. A curious case happened some years 
ago, resulting in the recover}* of two thousand pounds 
of damages from the mail company. The stage from 
Montreal, westward, broke through an air-hole on the 
St Lawrence, when driving over the ice, and all the 
passengers were immersed in the river, one of them 
getting both his hands so frozen that he lost them 
entirely They "ere both taken on at the wrists 
The money was a poor consolation for such a ca- 
lamity. I have known of a gentleman losing both 
hands by taking off his fur gloves to get better con- 
trol over a runaway horse. He got it stopped, but 
his hands were lost in the doing it 

The ice of the river used to give us abundant room 
for skating, where it was smooth enough. Near the 
towns even- one skates, even the ladies, of late 
doing their best at it. But the ice, with v.-. was :>ften 
too rough for this graceful and healthy exercise, so 
tised than it oil 1 have 

been. 



140 




CHAPTER VIII. 

The aurora borealis — * Jumpers' — Squaring' timber — Rafts — 
Camping out — A public meeting — Winter fashions — My toe 
frozen — A long winter's walk — Hospitality — Nearly lost in 
the woods. 

|HE grandeur of the aurora borealis, in the 
cold weather, particularly struck us. At 
times the whole heavens would be irradi- 
ated by it — shafts of light stretching from 
every side to the zenith, or clouds of brightness, of 
the softest rose, shooting, from every point of the 
horizon, high overhead. It was like the Hindoo 
legend of Indra's palace, which Southey describes so 
beautifully : 

c Even we on earth at intervals descry 

Gleams of the glory, streaks of flowing light, 
Openings of Heaven, and streams that flash at night 
In fitful splendour, ' through the northern sky.' 

Curse of Kehama, vii. 72. 

The fondness of almost every one for sleigh-riding 
was ludicrously shown in the contrivances invented 
in some cases to get the enjoyment of the luxury. 
The richer settlers, of course, had very comfortable 



'Jumpers? 141 

vehicles, with nice light runners, and abundance of 
skins of various kinds, to adorn them, and make them 
warm ; but every one was not so fortunate, and yet 
all were determined that ride they would. ' Have 
you anything to go in ? ' I have heard asked, once 
and again, with the answer, ' No, but I guess we can 
rig up a jumper pretty soon/ This i jumper,' when 
it made its appearance, if it were of the most prim- 
itive type, consisted simply of two long poles, with 
the bark on them, the one end to drag on the 
ground, and the other to serve for shafts for the 
horse; a cross-bar here and there behind, let into 
them through auger-holes, serving to keep them 
together. An old box, fixed on roughly above, served 
for a body to the carriage \ and, then, off they went, 
scraping along the snow in a wonderful way. Instead 
of buffalo-robes, if they had none, a coloured bed- 
quilt, wrapped round them, served to keep them warm. 
An old wood-sleigh, with a box on it, was something 
more aristocratic ; but anything that would merely 
hold them was made to pass muster. With plenty 
of trees at hand, and an axe and auger, a backwoods- 
man never thinks himself unprovided while the snow 
continues. 

It is in the winter that the great work of cutting 
and squaring timber, in the forests, for export to 
Europe, is done. Millions of acres, covered with 
the noblest trees, invite the industry of the wealthier 
merchants by the promise of liberal profit, along 



142 Squaring Timber. 

the whole edge of Canada, towards the north, from 
the Ottawa to Lake Huron. What the quantity 
of timber this vast region contains must be, may 
be estimated in some measure from the report of 
the Crown Land Commissioner, a few years since, 
which says that, in the Ottawa district alone, there 
is enough to answer every demand for the next six 
hundred years, if they continue felling it at the 
present rate. There is no fear, assuredly, of wood 
running short in Canada for many a day. The rafts 
brought down from Lake Huron alone are won- 
derful — thousands on thousands of immense trees, 
squared so as to lie closely together, each long 
enough, apparently, to be a mast for a large vessel. 
I have looked over the wilderness of the forest from 
two points — the one, the limestone ridge that runs 
from Niagara northward — the other, from the top of 
the sand-hills on the edge of Lake Huron — and no 
words can tell the solemn grandeur of the prospect in 
either case. Far as the eye could reach there was 
nothing to be seen but woods — woods — woods — a 
great sea of verdure, with a billowy roll, as the trees 
varied in height, or the lights and shadows played 
on them. It is said that the open desert impresses 
the traveller with a sense of its sublimity that is 
almost overpowering — the awful loneliness, the vast, 
naked, and apparently boundless sweep of the hori- 
zon on every side, relieved by no life or motion, 
or even variety of outline, subduing all alike. But I 



Squaring Timber. 143 

question if the sight of an American forest be not 
equally sublime. The veil cast by the trees over 
the landscape they adorn ; the dim wonder what 
may live beneath them, what waters flow, what lakes 
sparkle ■ the consciousness that you look on nature 
in her own unprofaned retreats; that before a white 
man had seen these shores the summer had already 
waked this wondrous spectacle of life and beauty, 
year after year, for ages ; the thoughts of mystery 
prompted by such 'a boundless deep immensity of 
shade ; ' the sense of vastness, inseparable from the 
thought that the circle of your horizon, which so 
overpowers you, sweeps on, in equal grandeur, over 
boundless regions — all these and other thoughts fill 
the mind with awe and tenderness. 

The district in which, chiefly, i lumber men/ 
strictly so called, ply their vocation, is on the Upper 
Ottawa, where vast tracts of pine and other trees are 
leased from Government by merchants in Quebec, 
Montreal, and elsewhere. For these gloomy regions 
vast numbers of lumberers set out from ' Kingston and 
Ottawa in the autumn, taking with them their 
winter's provision of pork, flour, &c. ; and building 
' shanties' for themselves — that is, rough huts, to 
live in through the long winter — as soon as they 
reach their limits. Intensely severe as the cold i?, 
they do not care for it. Sleeping at nights with their 
feet to the fire, and ' roughing ' it by day as no 
labourers would think of doing in England, they 



144 Rafts. 

keep up the highest spirits and the most vigorous 

health. To fell and square the trees is only part of 

their labour; they must also drag them over the 

snow to the river, by oxen, and join them into rafts 

after getting them to it. To form these, a large 

number of logs are laid closely, side by side, and 

lashed together by long, thin, supple rods tied round 

• 
pins driven into them, and further secured by 

transverse poles pinned down on them ; and they are 
then floated as rafts towards the St Lawrence, which 
they gradually reach, after passing, by means of con- 
trivances called c slides,' over the rough places, where 
the channel is broken into rapids. As they go down, 
poling or sailing, or shooting the slides, their course is 
enlivened by the songs and shouts of the crew, and 
very exciting it is to see and hear them. Once in 
the broad, smooth water, several smaller rafts are 
often joined together, and everything carefully prepar- 
ed for finally setting out for the lower ports. Even 
from their starting, they are often rigged out with 
short masts and sails, and houses are built on them, 
in which the crew take up their abode during the 
voyage. When they are larger, quite a number of 
sails are raised, so that they form . very striking ob- 
jects, when slowly gliding down the river, a rude 
steering-apparatus behind guiding the vast con- 
struction.* 

* On the upper lakes, the crew often take their wives and 
children, with their poultry, &c, on the rafts with them. 



Camping out. 145 

It is wonderful how men stand the exposure of the 
winter in the forests as they do. Indeed, a fine 
young fellow, a friend of mine, a surveyor, told me 
that he liked nothing better than to go off to the 
depths of the wilderness in the fall, and c camp out ' 
amidst the snows, night after night, till the spring 
thaws and the growth of the leaves forced an inter- 
mission of the work of his profession. An adventure 
that happened to a party who had, on one occasion, 
to travel some distance along a river-bed, in winter, 
is only a sample of what is continually met with 
beyond the settled parts of the country. There were 
seven or eight of them in all, including two half- 
breeds, whom they had employed, partly as guides, 
and partly to draw their slight luggage on hand- 
sleighs over the ice. The whole party had to wear 
snow-shoes to keep them from sinking into the soft 
snow, which had drifted, in many places, to a great 
depth ; and this itself, except to experienced hands, 
is at once very exhausting and painful. The snow- 
shoe is simply a large oval frame of light wood, 
crossed with a netting, on which the foot rests, and 
to which it is strapped, the extent of surface thus 
presented enabling the wearer to pass safely over 
drifts, in which, otherwise, he would at once sink. 
Starting at the first break of the dawn, they plodded 
on as well as they could, the ankles and knees of some 
of them getting more and more painful at every step 
with the weight of the great snow-shoes underneath. 
10 



146 Camping out. 

It was no use attempting to pick their steps in such 
a depth of snow, so that they had to take their chance 
of getting on some unsafe part of the ice at any 
moment. Meanwhile, the sky got darker and more 
lowering, until, at last, it broke into a snow-storm so 
heavy that they could hardly see one another at a 
few yards' distance. The wind, which was very 
strong, blew directly in their faces, and howled 
wildly through the trees on each side, whirling the 
drift in thick clouds in every direction. Still they 
held on as well as they could, in moody silence, till, 
at last, it was evident to all that they must give up 
the struggle, and make as good an encampment as 
they could, for the night, where they were. Turning 
aside, therefore, into the forest, where a dark stretch 
of pine-trees promised protection, they proceeded to 
get ready their resting-place. With the help of their 
axes, a maple was soon felled, and large pieces of bark, 
from the fallen trees around, formed shovels, by 
which a square spot of ground was cleared of the 
snow. A fire was the next great subject of interest, 
and this they obtained by rubbing some of the 
fibrous bark of the white cedar to powder, and lay- 
ing over it first thin peelings of birch-bark, and 
then the bark itself, a match sufficing to set the pile 
in a blaze, and the whole forest offering fuel. Piling 
log on log into a grand heap, the trees around were 
soon lighted up with a glow that shone far and near. 
To protect themselves from the snow, which was 



A Ptiblic Meeting, 147 

still falling, a quantity of spruce-boughs were next 
laid overhead on the rampart of snow which had been 
banked up round them to the height of nearly five 
feet, the cold of the day being so great that the fierce 
fire blazing close at hand made no impression on it 
whatever. Slices of salt pork, toasted on a stick at 
the fire, having been got ready by some, and broth, 
cooked in a saucepan, by others, they now took their 
comfort as best they could in a primitive supper, logs 
round the fire serving for seats. After this came 
their tobacco-pipes and a long smoke, and then each 
of the party lay down with his feet to the fire, and 
slept, covered with snow, till daylight next morning. 
This is the life led, week after week, by those 
whose avocations call them to frequent the forests 
during winter ; nor are the comforts of some of the 
poorer settlers in new districts, while they live in 
6 shanties/ at their first coming, much greater, nor 
their exposure much less. 

A public meeting, held in the next township, gave 
us an opportunity of seeing the population of a wide 
district in all the variety of winter costume. We 
went in a neighbour's sleigh, drawn by a couple of 
rough horses, whose harness, tied here and there with 
rope, and unprovided with anything to keep the 
traces from falling down, or the sleigh from running 
on the horses' heels, looked as unsafe as possible. 
But Canadian horses know how to act under such 
circumstances, as if they had studied them, and had 



148 A Public Meeting. 

contrived the best plan for avoiding unpleasant results. 
They never walked down any descent, but, on coming 
to any gully, dashed down the icy slope at a hard 
gallop, and, flying across the logs which formed a 
bridge at the bottom, tore up the opposite ascent, till 
forced to abate their speed by the weight of the ve- 
hicle. Then came the driver's part to urge' them up 
the rest of the acclivity by every form of threatening 
and persuasion in the vocabulary of his craft; and 
the obstacle once surmounted, off we were again at a 
smart trot. It was rather mild weather, however, 
for comfortable sleighing, the snow in deep places 
being little better than slush, through which it was 
heavy and slow work to drag us. At others, the 
ground was well-nigh bare, and then the iron-shod 
runners of the sleigh gave us most unpleasant music 
as they grated on the stones and gravel. As to 
shaking and jumbling, there was enough of both, as 
often as we struck on a lump of frozen snow, or some 
other obstruction \ but, at last, we got to our journey's 
end. The village was already thronged by numbers 
who had come from all parts, for it was a political 
meeting, and all Canadians are politicians. Such 
costumes as some exhibited are surely to be seen no- 
where else. One man, I noticed, had a suit made of 
drugget carpeting, with a large flower on a bright- 
green ground for pattern, one of the compartments 
of it reaching from his collar far down his back. 
Blanket coats of various colours, tied round the waist 



A Public Meeting. 149 

with a red sash, buffalo coats, fur caps of all sizes 
and shapes, mocassins, or coarse Wellingtons, with 
the trowser-legs tucked into them, mitts, gloves, and 
fur gauntlets, added variety to the picture. Almost 
every one was smoking at some time or other. The 
sleighs were ranged, some under the shed of the vil- 
lage tavern, others along the sides of the street, the 
horses looking like nondescript animals, from the 
skins and coverlets thrown over them to protect them 
from the cold. The 'bar' of the tavern was the 
great attraction to many, and its great blazing fire, 
on which a cartload of wood glowed with exhilarating 
heat, to others. Every one on entering, after des- 
perate stamping and scraping to get the snow from 
the feet, and careful brushing of the legs with a broom, 
to leave as little as possible for melting, made straight 
to it, holding up each foot by turns to get it dried, as 
far as might be. There was no pretence at showing 
deference to any one ; a labourer had no hesitation 
in taking the only vacant seat, though his employer 
were left standing. ' Treating ' and being * treated ' 
went on with great spirit at the bar, mutual strangers 
asking each other to drink as readily as if they had 
been old friends. Wine-glasses were not to be seen, 
but, instead, tumblers were set out, and c a glass ' was 
left to mean what any one chose to pour into them. 
One old man I saw put his hand in a knowing way 
round his tumbler, to hide his filling it to the brim ; 
but he proved to be a confirmed and hopeless drunk- 



150 My Toe Frozen. 

ard, who had already ruined himself and his family, 
and was able to get drunk only at the expense of 
others. 

We stayed for a time to listen to the speeches, 
which were delivered from a small balcony before 
the window of the tavern, but were very uninteresting 
to me, at least, though the crowd stood patiently in 
the snow to hear them. I confess I was glad when 
our party thought they had heard enough, and turned 
their sleigh homewards once more. 

I had the misfortune to get one of my great toes 
frozen in the second or third winter. We were 
working at the edge of the woods, repairing a fence 
which had been blown down. The snow was pretty 
deep, and I had been among it some hours, and did 
not feel colder than usual, my feet being every day as 
cold as lead, whenever I was not moving actively 
about. - I had had my full measure of stamping and 
jumping to try to keep up the circulation, and had 
no suspicion of anything extra, till, on coming home, 
having taken off my stockings to heat myself better, 
to my consternation, the great toe of my left foot was 
as white as wax— the sure sign that it was frozen. 
Heat being of all things the most dangerous in 
such circumstances, I had at once to get as far as 
possible from the fire, while some one brought me 
a large basin of snow, with which I kept rubbing 
the poor stiff member for at least an hour before it 
came to its right hue. But what shall I say of the 



Hospitality. 151 

pain of returning circulation? Freezing is nothing, 
but thawing is agony. It must be dreadful indeed 
where the injury has been extensive. Even to this 
day, notwithstanding all my rubbing, there is still 
a tender spot in the corner of my boot on cold days. 
It was a mercy I noticed it in time, for had I put 
my feet to the fire without first thawing it, I might 
have had serious trouble, and have lost it, after great 
suffering. A gentleman I knew, who got his feet 
frozen in 18 13, in marching with his regiment from 
Halifax, in Nova Scotia, to Niagara — a wonderful 
achievement in the depth of winter, through an unin- 
habited wilderness buried in snow — never perfectly 
recovered the use of them, and walked lame to the 
day of his death. 

In our early days in Canada, the sacred duty of 
hospitality was observed with a delightful readiness 
and freeness. A person who had not the means of 
paying might have travelled from one end of the 
country to another, without requiring money, and he 
would everywhere have found a cheerful welcome. 
The fact was that the sight of a strange face was a 
positive relief from the monotony of everyday life, 
and the news brought by each visitor was felt to be 
as pleasant to hear, as the entertainment could be for 
him to receive. But selfish thoughts did not, after 
all, dim the beautiful open-handedness of backwoods 
hospitality. No thought of any question or doubt 
rose in the matter — to come to the door was to rest 



152 Hospitality. 

for the night, and share the best of the house. I 
was once on my way westward to the St Clair, from 
London, Canada West, just in the interval between 
the freezing of the roads and the fall of the snow. 
The stage could not run, nor was travelling by any 
kind of vehicle practicable ; indeed, none could have 
survived the battering it would have got, had it 
been brought out. As I could not wait doing nothing 
for an indefinite time, till snow made sleighing pos- 
sible, which I was told by the stage proprietor ' might 
be a week, might be a fortnight/ I determined to 
walk the sixty miles as best I could. 

But such roads ! As to walking, it was impossible ; 
I had rather to leap from one hillock of frozen mud 
to another, now. in the middle, now at each side, by 
turns. There was a little snow, which only made my 
difficulties greater, clogging the feet, and covering up 
holes. For yards together, the road had been washed 
away by the rains, and its whole surface was dotted 
with innumerable little frozen lakes, where the water 
had lodged in the huge cups and craters of mud which 
joined each other in one long network the whole way. 
It was a dreadful scramble, in which daylight was 
absolutely necessary to save broken legs. No man 
could have got over it in the dark. In the early 
afternoon, I reached a tavern at the road-side and had 
dinner, but as I was told that there was another, seven 
miles ahead, I thought I could reach it before night, 
and thus get so much nearer my journey's end. But 



Hospitality. 153 

I had reckoned beyond my powers, and darkness fell 
while I was as yet far from my goal. Luckily, a 
little log-house at a distance showed itself near the 
road by the light through its windows. Stumbling 
towards it as I best could, I told them how I was 
benighted, and asked if I could get shelter till 
morning. 

1 Come in, sir,' said the honest proprietor, ' an' 
ye're welcome.' He proved to be a decent shoe- 
maker ; a young man, with a tidy young woman for 
his wife ; and as I entered, he beckoned me to be 
seated, while he continued at his work on an old shoe, 
by the help of a candle before him. 

' Bad roads,' said I. 

1 Oh, very,' answered my host. ' I never puts any 
man away from my door ; nobody could get to the 
tavern over sich roads as them. Take your coat off, 
and make yourself comfortable.' 

I did as I was told, and chatted with the couple 
about all the ordinary topics of backwoods conversa- 
tion — the price of land — the last crops — how long he 
had been there, and so on, till tea, or as they called 
it, supper ; for Canadians generally take only three 
meals a day. And a right hearty meal I made, 
from a display of abundance of snowy bread, excel- 
lent butter, ham in large slices, and as much tea 
as there might be water in the kettle, for tea is the 
weak point in bush fare. When bed-time came, I found 
there was only one bed in the house, and could not 



154 Nearly Lost in the Woods. 

imagine how they were to do with me ; but this was 
soon solved by their dragging the feather-bed off, 
and bringing it- out where I was, from the inner 
room, and spreading it on the floor opposite the 
fire. Nothing would induce them to keep it to them- 
selves and give me anything else ; I was their guest, and 
they would have me entertained as well as they could. 
Next morning, a famous breakfast was got ready, and 
I was again made to sit down with them. But not 
a word would the honest fellow hear about money. 
6 He would never be the worse for giving a bed and 
a meal to a traveller, and I was very welcome.' So 
I had to thank them very sincerely and bid them 
good-day, with their consciousness of having done a 
kindness as their only reward. On this second day's 
journey, I had the most awkward mishap that ever 
befell me in the woods. I was all but lost in them, 
and that just as the sun was about to set. The roads 
were so frightful that I could hardly get on, and 
hence, when the landlord of one of the wayside 
taverns told me I would save some miles by cutting 
through the bush at a point he indicated, I was very 
glad to follow his advice. But trees are all very 
much alike, and by the time I got to where he told 
me to leave the road, I must have become confused ; 
for when I did leave it, not a sign of any track 
showed itself, far or near. I thought I could find it, 
however, and pushed on, as I fancied, in the direction 
that had been pointed out to me. But, still, no road 



Nearly Lost in the Woods. 155 

made its appearance, and, finally, in turning round to 
look for it, I forgot which way to set myself, on again 
starting. In fact I was lost, fairly lost. I had got 
into a wide cedar-swamp, the water in which was 
only slightly frozen, so that I had to leap from the 
root of one tree to that of another. Not a sound 
was to be heard, nor a living creature to be seen. 
Only trees, trees, trees, black and unearthly in the 
lessening light. I hardly knew what to do. If forced 
to stay there all night, I might — indeed, I would likely 
—be frozen to death : but how to get out ? That I 
ultimately did, I know, but by no wisdom of mine, 
There was absolutely nothing to guide me. My 
deliverance was the merciful result of having by 
chance struck a slight track, which I forthwith fol- 
lowed, emerging, at last, not, as I had hoped, some 
miles ahead, but a long way behind where I had 
entered. 



156 




CHAPTER IX. 

Involuntary racing — A backwoods parsonage— Graves in the 
wilderness — Notions of equality — Arctic winters — Ruffed 
grouse — Indian fishing in winter — A marriage — Our winter's 
pork. 

MONG our occasional visitors, we had, 
one year, at one time, no fewer than 
three ministers, who chanced to be on 
some Home Missionary Society business 
in our quarter, and very nice company they were. 
Some of their stories of the adventures that befell 
them in their journeys amused us greatly. One was 
a stout, hearty Irishman, the two others Englishmen ; 
and what with the excitement of fresh scenes every 
day, and the healthy open air, of which they had 
perhaps too much, they were all in high spirits. At 
one part they had crossed a tract of very rolling 
land, where the road was all up one slope and down 
another, and this, as everything happened at the 
time to be one great sheet of ice, was no pleasant 
variety to their enjoyments. There was too little 
snow for sleighing, and, yet, to ride down these 
treacherous descents in a wheeled conveyance was 



Involitntary Racing. 157 

impossible. At the top of an extra long one they had 
therefore determined, not only to get out, but to 
take the horses out, one of them leading them down, 
while the other two brought down the vehicle. It 
was a large, double-seated affair, with four wheels, 
and a pole for two horses ; and it was thought that 
the best plan to get it down safely was for one of the 
two to go to the tongue of the pole, in front, while 
the other held back behind. Everything thus ar- 
ranged, at a given signal the first movement over 
the edge of the slope was made, and all went well 
enough for a few steps. But the worthy man be- 
hind soon felt that he had no power whatever, with 
such slippery footing, to retard the quickening speed 
of the wheels, while the stout Irishman, who chanced 
to be at the front, felt, no less surely, that he could 
neither let his pole go, nor keep it from driving him 
forward at a rate to which he was wholly unaccus- 
tomed. 'Stop it, Brooks— I'll be killed !— it'll be 
over me ! ' 'I can't stop it,' passed and repassed 
in a moment, and, at last, poor Mr Brooks's feet 
having gone from under him, the whole affair was 
consigned to his Irish friend, whom the increasing 
momentum of his charge was making fly down the 
hill at a most unclerical rate. ' I'll be killed! I'm 
sure it'll be over me I ' was heard to rise from him 
as he dashed away into the hollow beneath. His two 
friends not only could do nothing to help him, but 
could not move for laughing, mixed with anxiety, 



158 A Backwoods Parsonage. 

till at last the sufferer managed to find relief when 
he had been carried a considerable way up the next 
slope. 

One of the three wore a. contrivance over his fur 
cap in travelling which, so far as I have noticed, was 
unique. It was made of brown Berlin wool, much 
in the shape of one of the helmets of the Knights 
Templars, in the Temple Church, the only opening 
being for part of the face, while what you' might 
call its tails hung down over his shoulders. He 
looked very much like one of the men in the dress 
for going down in a diving-bell when it was on him, 
his head standing out like a huge ball from his 
shoulders. Their entertainment was, it appeared, 
sometimes strange enough. One gave an account of 
a night he had spent in a backwoods parsonage, 
where the mice had run over his pillow all night, 
the only furniture in his room, besides the bed, being 
some pieces of bacon and a bit of cheese. He had 
had the only spare room in the house, in fact, which, 
in the absence of guests,, served as a store-room. 
Nor was this the worst ; though it was in the depth 
of winter, he could see the stars through chinks of 
the roof as he lay, and snow having come on in 
the night, he found it lying deep on his coverlet 
when he awoke. What some clergymen suffer in 
the poorer districts must, indeed, be terrible. A 
touching thing about the one who could offer only 
such poor accommodation to a friend, was his point- 



Notions of Equality. 159 

ing to a little mound in the few feet of enclosure 
before his door, and saying that his only son, an 
infant, was buried there. The way in which graves 
are scattered up and down Canada is, indeed, one of 
the most affecting sights, as one passes. Churchyards 
are, of course, only found where population has 
gathered to some extent, and, hence, all who die in 
the first periods of settlement used to be buried on 
their own farms. Very often, in riding through old 
parts of the country, a little paling in the side of a field 
tells the story of some lonely grave. The Moslems 
who feel themselves about to die in the desert pass 
away with a parting prayer that the Resurrection 
Angel may not forget their lonely resting-places at 
the last day. I have often thought that these patri- 
archs of the woods might have closed their life with 
the same petition. 

One of our visitors told us an amusing story of 
the notions of equality that everywhere prevailed. 
He had been visiting an old Canadian township, with 
his wife and a young lady, their friend, and found, 
when night came, that there was only one bed unoc- 
cupied, which was appropriated to himself and his 
wife. Their friend was, therefore, led away to an- 
other room in which there were two beds — one for 
the host and his wife, the othei for the servant, and 
to this she was pointed, with the information that if 
she lay close she could find room at the girl's back. 
Not altogether relishing this arrangement, she made 



160 Arctic Winters. 

some excuse for returning *to the " parlour," where 
she sat for a time, only coming to her sleeping-place 
when she could not help it. But that she should 
ever have hesitated in the matter seemed to all, alike, 
unaccountable, and, our visitor assured us, had so 
impressed their minds, that, a good while after, he 
learned that they still talked of it, and spoke of her 
pride as marking unusual depravity. 

In later years I was happy to make the acquaint- 
ance, in one of the Canadian towns, of Captain 

L , who had commanded one of the expeditions 

in search of Sir John Franklin, and, in many con- 
versations with him, learned particulars of winter 
life in the more northern part of the American con- 
tinent, which, in comparison, make that of Canada 
even inviting. To think of undressing, for eight 
months of the year, in these fearful regions, is out of 
the question. The dress, frozen stiff through the 
day, is thawed into soaking wetness by the heat of a 
snow-house at night, in which each sits as close to 
his neighbour as is possible, with no light but that 
of a miserable lamp, and imprisoned on every side 
by the heaped-up blocks of snow. In Canada, we 
can always get ourselves dried, whatever the weather ; 
but there, all alike, when not on board ship, are 
wet, month after month, each night through the 
winter. Happening one day to hear a boy whist- 
ling the negro song, ' Old Uncle Ned,' the captain 
stopped me with the question, ' Where do you think 



Ruffed Grozcse. 161 

I first heard that song?' Of course I told him I 
could not tell. ' It was on a terrible night, in Prince 
Regent's Inlet, when we were crossing, it. The 
snow was falling very heavily, and the storm roaring 
through the hammocks, and I had called a halt 
behind a great piece of ice which offered a shelter. I 
thought we had better build a snow-house behind 
it and take refuge for the night. The men squatted 
down in this, I in their midst, all of us huddled 
together as close as possible, and, to keep up their 
spirits through the dismal hours, they began singing 
one thing after another, and that among the rest.' 
This was worse than the encampments of surveyors, 
bad though they be. 

There was not a great deal of sport to be had, if 
we exclude the deer, in our neighbourhood. When 
we went out with our guns, the snow was generally 
marked by a good many squirrel tracks, and the 
woodpeckers were still to be seen, but game, properly 
so called, was not abundant. There was some how- 
ever, and we managed to get our proportion now and 
then for our table. One day, in passing a tree, I 
heard a sound something like that of a grouse rising, 
and on turning, to my astonishment, found it came 
from a bird like our partridges, which had lighted on 
a bough close at hand. A moment, and it was in a 
fair way for contributing to our dinner. These birds 
are in Canada called partridges, but their proper name 
is the ruffed grouse. When sprung, it flies with 
ii 



1 62 Rtiffed Grouse. 

great vigour and with a loud whirring noise, sweeping 
to a considerable distance through the woods before 
it alights. The cock has a singular power of making 
a drumming noise with his wings, which, when heard 
in the silence of the woods, has a strange effect. 
Standing on an old fallen log, and inflating its whole 
body as a turkey-cock does, strutting and wheeling 
about with great stateliness, he presently begins to 
strike with his stiffened wings in short and quick 
strokes, which become more and more rapid until 
they run into each other, making the sound to which 
I allude. It is no doubt the way in which he pays 
his addresses to his mate, or calls her from a distance. 
They always perch in trees, delighting in the thick 
shade of the spruce or the pine, and are perfect 
models of stupidity, letting you get every advantage 
in your efforts to shoot them. I have known one sit, 
without attempting to stir, while a dog was getting 
frantic in his appeals at the tree foot that you should 
come and kill it. If your gun snap you may take 
your time, and, if necessary, may draw your charge 
and reload, without your victim moving. He will 
stand and gape at you during the whole process, even 
if your dog be barking and tearing a few yards below 
him. It is even said that you may bag a whole covey 
of them if you shoot the lowest first and go upwards. 
I myself have seen my brother, on coming on some 
of them when without his gun, run home perhaps half 
a mile for it, and find them still sitting where they were, 



Indian Fishing in Winter. 163 

when he came back, as if waiting to be shot. They 
are delicious eating, and so tender is their skin that 
you must not think of carrying them by the head, 
which would be sure to come off with the weight of 
the body. 

One day, walking down the ice of the river, a 
curious appearance presented itself at some distance 
before me, like a brown heap, or mound, thrown up on 
the white surface. Making my way towards it, when 
about a hundred yards off I thought I saw it move a 
little, and, halting for a moment, perceived that it 
really did so. I was half inclined to go home for my 
gun to make myself safe, when suddenly the head and 
shoulders of an Indian, raised from the edge of the 
buffalo skin, for such it was, dissipated any alarm. 
Going up to him, I found he was employed in fishing, 
and partly for protection, partly to keep the fish from 
being alarmed, had completely covered himself with the 
hide which had so attracted my attention. He had 
cut a hole through the two-feet-thick ice about a foot 
square, and sat with a bait hanging from one hand, 
while in the other he held a short spear to transfix any 
deluded victim which it might tempt to its destruction. 
The bait was an artificial fish of white wood, with 
leaden eyes and tin fins, and about eight or nine 
inches in length. He seemed rather annoyed at my 
disturbing him ; but on my giving him a small ball of 
twine I happened to have with me we became good 
enough friends, and after a few minutes I left him. 



164 A Marriage. 

There was a marriage on the river the first winter we 
were there, which in some respects amused us. The 
bride was an elegant girl, of genteel manners ; and 
the bridegroom was a well-educated and very re- 
spectable young man ; but that either of them should 
have thought of marrying in such a state of poverty as 
was common to both was a thing to be thought of only 
in Canada. The bridegroom's wealth was, I believe, 
limited to some twenty pounds, and the bride brought 
for her portion fifty acres of land and some stock, 
which a relative gave her as a dowry. But money she 
had none, and even the shoes in which she went to be 
married, as I afterwards learned, had been borrowed 
from a married sister. Their future home was simply 
a dilapidated log-house, which stood with its gable to 
the roadside, perhaps eight feet by eighteen, forming 
two apartments, an addition, which had once been in- 
tended to be made, so as to join the end next the road 
at right angles, but remained unfinished, being shut off 
by a door of thin deal, which, alone, kept the wind out 
at that corner. We crossed the ice to the American 
side to have, the ceremony performed, after which 
there was a grand dinner, with true Canadian abund- 
ance, in her patron's house, in which, up to that time, 
she had had her home. Their own shanty not being 
as yet habitable, the young couple remained there till 
it was repaired, so as to let them move to it. But no. 
money could be spent on the mansion ; whatever was 
to be done had to be done by the kind aid of amateurs, 



Primitive Furniture. 165 

if any Canadians deserve that name, whatever they 
may have to undertake. The chimney had to be re- 
built of mud, the walls caulked and filled up with mud, 
some panes of glass put in the two little windows, a 
wooden latch to be fitted to the thin deal that formed 
the outer door, and the whole had to be white-washed, 
after which all was pronounced ready. The furniture 
was as primitive as the house. A few dishes on a rude 
shelf, a pot or two, a few wooden chairs and a table, 
set off the one end ; while, in the other, an apology 
for a carpet, and a few better things — the faint traces 
of richer days in their fathers' houses — made up their 
parlour ; a wooden bench on the one side, ingeniously 
disguised as a sofa, reminding you of the couplet in 
Goldsmith's description of the village ale-house, where 
was seen 

' The chest, contrived a double debt to pay — 
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.' 

The produce of the fifty acres, which were mostly 
cleared, but which, having been the farm of an old 
French settler, were well nigh worn out for a time, 
and had wretched fences, was to be the support of 
the young housekeepers, though, less than a year 
before, the husband had been a student in one of the 
universities in Scotland To have seen him when 
fairly installed in his agricultural honours, in a 
wretched straw hat, blue shirt, cotton trowsers, and 
heavy coarse boots, with a long blue beech rod in 



1 66 Our Winter s Pork. 

his hand, shouting to his oxen, it would hardly have 
occurred to an old countryman that he was anything 
but a labourer. I am thankful to say, however, that 
he ultimately escaped from the misery in which his 
imprudent marriage threatened to involve him, by 
getting into a pretty good mercantile situation, in 
which, I hope, he is now comfortably settled. I 
should have said, that, having no money with which to 
hire labour, all the work on his farm had to be done 
by his own hands,, without any aid. The trifle he 
had at first melted like snow, the two having set out 
with it to make a wedding-trip, in a sleigh, to a town 
seventy miles off, from which they returned with little 
but the empty purse. 

A little before Christmas a great time came on — ■ 
the high solemnity of the annual pig-killing for the 
winter. It was bad enough for the poor swine, no 
doubt, but the human details were, in some respects^ 
sufficiently ludicrous. The first year we got a man to 
do the killing, and a woman to manage the rest ; 
and, between them, with a razor-blade fixed into a 
piece of wood for a scraper, they won our admiration 
by their skill. I mention it only for an illustra- 
tion it afforded of the misery to which the poor 
Indians are often reduced in the winter. A band of 
them made their appearance almost as soon as we had 
begun, and hung round, for the sake of the entrails 
and other offal, till all was over. Of course we gave 
them good pieces, but they were hungry enough to 



Sufferings of the Indians. 167 

have needed the whole, could we have spared it. As 
soon as anything was thrown aside, there was a scram- 
ble of both men and women for it. Each, as soon as 
he had secured his share, twisted it round any piece 
of stick that lay near, and, after thrusting it for a 
minute into the fire, where the water was heating for 
scalding the pigs, devoured it greedily, filthy and 
loathsome as it was. They must often be in great 
want in the cold weather, when game is scarce. I 
was coming from the bush one morning when I saw 
an Indian tugging with all his might at something 
that lay in the middle of the road. On nearer ap- 
proach, it proved to be one of our pigs which had 
died of some disease during the night. The poor 
fellow had put his foot on its side, and was pulling 
with all his strength at the hind-leg to try to tear off 
the ham, but a pig's skin is very tough, and though 
he pulled at it till he had crossed and recrossed the 
road several times, he had to give up the battle at 
last, and leave it as he found it. A friend of mine 
who was lost in the woods for several days, and, in the 
end, owed his deliverance to his falling in with a few- 
wigwams, told me that the Indians informed him 
that they were sometimes for three days together with- 
out food. 



i68 




CHAPTER X. 

Our neighbours — Insect plagues — Military officers' families in 

the bush — An awkward mistake — Dr D nearly shot for 

a bear — Major M — Our candles — Fortunate escape 

from a fatal accident. 

[jE used to have delightful evenings some- 
times when neighbouring settlers came to 
our house, or when we went to their 
houses. Scanty though the population 
was, we had lighted on a section of the country which 
had attracted a number of educated and intelligent 
men, who, with their families, made capital society. 

Down the river we had Captain G , but he was 

little respected by reason of his irregular habits, 
which, however, might be partly accounted for by the 
effect on his brain of a fierce slash on the head which 
he had got at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo. Then, 

above us, we had, about three miles off, Mr R , 

an English gentleman-farmer, who had found his way 
to the backwoods, after losing much money from 
one cause or another. He was one of the church- 
wardens, and leader of the choir in the Episcopal 
chapel, as it was called, for there is no church estab- 



Insect Plagues. 169 

lishment in Canada \ a man, moreover, of much gen- 
eral information, a good shot, and, what was better, 
a good Christian. He had always plenty of fresh 
London newspapers of the stiff Tory class, but 
acceptable to all alike in such a place as St Clair. 
His house was at the foot of a steep bank, and as 

there were only himself and Mrs R to occupy 

it, its size was not so striking as its neatness. A 
broad verandah ran along the side of it next the 
river, its green colour contrasting very pleasantly 
with the whiteness of the logs of the house. There 
were three apartments within; one a sitting-room, 
the other two bed-rooms, one of which was always at 
the disposal of a visitor. Over the mantelpiece hung 
a gun and a rifle, and on it stood, as its special orna- 
ment, a silver cup given by one of the English 
Cabinet Ministers as the prize in a shooting-match in 

B shire, and won by Mr R . There was only 

one drawback to a visit to him, at least in summer, 
and that was the certainty of your getting more than 
you bargained for in the insect way when you went 
into the barn to put up your horse. Fleas are wonder- 
fully plentiful throughout Canada, but some parts are 
worse that others. A sandy soil seemed to breed 
them, as the mud of the Nile was once thought to 

breed worms, and Mr R 's barn stood on a spot 

which the fleas themselves might have selected as a 
favourable site for a colony. Under the shelter of 
his sheds they multiplied to a wonderful extent. So 



170 Insect Plagues. 

incurable was the evil that it had come to be thought 
only a source of merriment. 

1 Ah, you've been at the barn, have you ? ha, ha ! p 
was all the pity you could get for any remark on the 
plentifulness of insect life in these quarters. ' It 
isn't half so bad/ he added one day, ' as the preacher 
over the river who sat down at the doorstep of the 
chapel to look over his notes before service, and had 
hardly got into the pulpit before he found that a 
whole swarm of ants had got up his trousers. You 
may think how his hands went below the bookboard 
on each side of him, but it wouldn't do. He had to 
tell the congregation that he felt suddenly indisposed, 
and would be back in a few moments, which he took 
advantage of to turn the infested garment inside out 
behind the chapel, and after having freed them of his 
tormentors, went up to his post again, and got through 
in peace/ 

' I don't think he was much worse off/ struck in 
a friend, 'than the ladies are with the grasshoppers. 
The horrid creatures, with their great hooky legs, 
and their jumping six feet at a time, make dreadful 
work when they take a notion of springing, just as 
folks are passing over them. I've seen them myself 
through a thin muslin dress making their way hither 
and thither in service-time, and there they must stay 
till all is over/ 

But I am forgetting the list of our river friends. 
There were, besides Mr B , four or five miles 



Officers Families in the Btcsk. 171 

above us, Captain W , who had been flag-lieute- 
nant of a frigate off St Helena while Bonaparte was 
a captive there, and had managed to preserve a lock 

of his soft, light-brown hair ; and Mr L , brother 

of one of our most eminent English judges, and 
himself once a midshipman under Captain Marryatt ; 

and Post-Captain V- , and the clergyman — the 

farthest only ten miles off. There were, of course, 
plenty of others, but they were of a very different 
class — French Canadians, agricultural labourers turned 
farmers, and the like, with very little to attract in their 
society. 

The number of genteel families who had betaken 
themselves to Canada was, in those days, astonishing. 
The fact of the Governors being then mostly mili- 
tary men, who offered inducements to their old com- 
panions in arms who had not risen so high in rank 
as they, led to crowds of that class burying them- 
selves in the woods all over the province. I dare 
say they did well enough in a few instances, but in 
very many cases the experiment only brought misery 
upon themselves and their families. Brought up in 
ease, and unaccustomed to work with their hands, 
it was not to be expected that they could readily 
turn mere labourers, which, to be a farmer in Canada, 
is absolutely necessary. I was once benighted about 
forty miles from* home, and found shelter for the night 
in a log-house on the roadside, where I shared 
a bed on the floor with two labourers, the man of 



172 Officers Families in the Bush. 

the house and his wife sleeping at the other end of 
the room. After breakfast the next morning, in 
grand style, with cakes, i apple sauce ' in platefuls, 
bread white as snow, meat, butter, cream, cheese, 
fritters, and colourless green tea of the very worst 
description, I asked them if they could get any con- 
veyance to take me home, as the roads were very 
heavy for travelling on foot, from the- depth of the 
snow, and its slipperiness in the beaten track. They 
themselves, however, had none, but I was directed 

to Captain L ? s, close at hand, where I was told 

I might find one. The house stood on a rising 
ground, which was perfectly bare, all the trees hav- 
ing been cut down for many acres round. There 
was not even the pretence of garden before the doors, 
nor any enclosure, but the great shapeless old log- 
house stood, in all its naked roughness, alone. Mrs 
L , I found, was an elderly lady of elegant man- 
ners, and had seen a great deal of the world, having 
been abroad with her husband's regiment in the 
Mediterranean and elsewhere. She had met Sir 
Walter Scott at Malta, and was full of gossip about 
him and society generally in England and elsewhere. 
Her dress struck me on entering. It had once been 
a superb satin, but that was very many years before. 
There was hardly anything to be called furniture in 
the house, a few old wooden chairs, supplemented by 
some blocks of wood, mere cuts of trees, serving for 
seats, a great deal table, and a ' grand piano ! ' which, 



Officers' Families in the Bush. 1 73 

Mrs L told me, they bought at Vienna, forming 

all that could be seen. The very dog-irons on which 
their fire rested were broken. Overhead, I heard 
feet pattering on the loose open boards which formed 
the floor of some apartments, and was presently in- 
formed that ' the dressing-room ' of the Misses L 

was above, and that they would soon be down. 
Not an inch of carpet, nor any ornament on the walls, 
nor anything, in fact, to take off the forlorn look of 
emptiness, was in the place ; but the stateliness of 
language and manner on the part of the hostess was 
the same as if it had been a palace. After a time, a 
lad, the youngest of the household, made his appear- 
ance, and was informed of my wish to get on to 
Bidport as quickly as possible. He was introduced 
as having been born in Corfu, and as speaking Greek 
as fluently as English ; but the poor fellow had a 
bad chance of ever making much use of his lin- 
guistic acquirements in such a place. The horse 
having to be caught, and a jumper to be ' fixed/ I 
had a long rest before setting out, and, in the mean 
time, the sound of the axe, and of wooden pins 
being driven home, intimated that ^the vehicle was 

being manufactured. Captain L , . it appeared, 

had come there in the idea that the country would 
soon be filled up, and that, in some magical way, the 
soil, covered though it was with trees, would yield 
him a living at once plentiful and easily procured. 
But years had passed on, the money got for his 



1 74 Officers Families in the Bush. 

commission was spent, and the township round him 
was still almost a wilderness. From one step to 
another the family sank into the deepest want, until 

Mrs L was at last forced to try to get food, by 

making up the wreck of her former finery into caps 
and such like for the wives of the boors around, and 
hawking them about, till she could sell them for flour 
or potatoes. It could not have been expected that 
the captain could work like a labourer — he was 
totally unfit for it, and would have died over his task, 
or, at best, could have made no living ; and, except 
the stripling who was to drive me, the family con- 
sisted only of daughters. One of these, however, 
shortly after my visit, actually managed to make an 
excellent marriage even in that horrible place; but 
there was a dash of the ludicrous even in the court- 
ship, from the pinching and straits to which their 
poverty subjected them. The suitor had not as yet 
declared himself, and the fact of his being a gentle- 
man by birth and education made his frequent visits 
only -so much the more embarassing. One day he 
had come in the forenoon, and stayed so long, that 
it was clear he had no intention of leaving before 
dinner, while there was literally nothing in the house 
but a few potatoes, which they could not of course 

offer him. What was to be done? Mrs L 

and the fair one, her eldest daughter, retired to a 
corner of the room to consult, and, lest anything 
should be overheard, they spoke in Italian, which 



An A wkward Mistake. 175 

they never dreamed of the suitor understanding. To 
his unspeakable amusement, the whole perplexity of 
the case forthwith proceeded to unfold itself in 
foreign syllables. ' The nasty fellow, what in the 
world won't he go away for ? ' says the daughter ; 
' look at him there, sitting like a fool when people 
are in such trouble. He ought to know that we have 
nothing in the pantry but a few horrid potatoes/ 
And so forth. This was quite enough for the visitor. 
He suddenly recollected that he had another call to 
make, and their difficulty about him was over in a 
minute. But the marriage came off notwithstanding, 
and a handsome couple they made. 

After a time the sleigh was ready, such as it was — a 
rough box, on rough runners, close to the ground, with 
a piece of plank for a seat, and a bed-quilt for a 
wrapper; and late that night I got home, a half- 
sovereign and his expenses making the poor young 
fellow right glad I had chanced to come his way. 

One day I was much diverted by an incident 

narrated to me by Mr B . 'You know,' said 

he, ' Dr D , from Toronto, was riding along in a 

sleigh yesterday on some business or other. You are 
aware he is very short and stout, and he had on a 
buffalo coat, and a great fur cap. Well, down goes 
his horse, its feet balled with the snow, I suppose ; 
and there it lay, helpless, on its side, under the shafts. 
It was pretty near old John Thompson's, the Scotch- 
man. Out gets the doctor to help his poor horse by 



176 Marriages in the Busk. 

unbuckling its straps and so on, and, being very short- 
sighted, he had to get down his face almost on it. 
Just at this time, Mrs Thompson chanced to come to 
the door, and there was this apparition in the distance, 
in the middle of the road. She instantly made up her 
mind what it was. " Eh, John, John, bring your gun ; 
here's a bear devoorin' a horse ! " But they didn't 
shoot the doctor after all, for the old man found out in 
time who it was.' 

But I have to say a little more about some of the 
marriages in our neighbourhood, or not far from it. 
You may easily suppose that it is not every one who 

is so lucky as [Miss L , of whom I have spoken. 

Those of both sexes who made poor matches were 
much more numerous in those early days. There was 

Kate S , the daughter of a captain in the army, 

an elegant girl, who, for want, I suppose, of any other 
suitor, married a great coarse clown, whom her father, 
had he been living then, would hardly have taken to 
work for them. When he died, she married another, 
his fellow, and ended, on his dying, by taking, as her 
third husband, a working tailor, with three or four 

children. There was Major M , who had come 

to the country about the same time as Captain L ; 

nothing could be more wretched than the appearance 
of his house on the road-side, with the great trees 
almost close to it, himself an elderly man, and his 
only children two daughters. I remember passing on 
horseback one frightful morning, when the roads were 



Scarcity of Candles. 177 

at the worst, and finding him on the top of a prostrate 
log, trying to cut off enough for his fire. His daughter 
finally married a small tradesman in a neighbouring 
town ; and the major thankfully went to close his days 
with his son-in-law, in far greater comfort than he had 
known for a long time. Young fellows married girls 
whom their mothers would hardly have taken for serv- 
ants in England ; partly, I suppose, because there were 
not in some parts many to choose from, and partly, no 
doubt, because their position as farm-labourers, which 
they had really come to be, had lowered their tastes. 
I remember seeing a young man come out of a village 
tavern with a short black pipe in his mouth, a long 
beech rod in his hand, and a blue blouse, surmounted 
by a wretched straw hat, for his dress, his whole ap- 
pearance no better than that of any labourer round. 
He was driving an ox-waggon, but, before starting, a 
lady at my side in the stage, which had stopped at the 
tavern, accosted him, and they entered freely into con- 
versation together. He turned out to be a son of 

Colonel , who lived in a wretched log-hut not far 

distant. He told his friend that he hoped to get a 
good berth that summer as purser on one of the small 
lake steamers ; and I hope he succeeded. Mean- 
while, he was mixing with the herd of ' bush-whackers/ 
as Canadians say, at the tavern fire, himself almost 
one of them. 

We had one drawback in the long winter nights — 
there was often a great scarcity of candles. One was 



178 Air-holes in the Ice. 

lighted at supper, but it was put out immediately after 
the meal ; and we had to sit at the light of the fire, 
which we made as bright as possible by a supply of 
resinous pine, from time to time. We sometimes had 
enough of candles, indeed, but I think we were more 
often without them. Some lard in a saucer, with a 
piece of rag for a wick, was one of our plans in ad- 
dition to the pine, when we wished to see our way to 
our beds. 

There was very nearly a fatal accident down the 
river one day, occasioned by a sleigh, and the folks in 
it, with the horses as well, breaking through an air- 
hole in the ice, that is, a spot at which the air im- 
prisoned below the ice had found its escape, leaving 
the surface only very slightly frozen. How they 
got out I hardly know, but the ice round the hole was 
quite strong ; and after one of the party had clambered 
upon it he managed to fish out the rest, who had 
clung to the sleigh. Even the horses were saved ; but 
the method taken with them seemed to me as hazardous 
as it was strange : ropes were passed round their necks 
as quickly as possible, and when by t this means they 
were half choked, they floated so high that they were 
got out with comparative ease. 



179 




CHAPTER XI. 

'Now Spring returns' — Sugar-making — Bush psalmody —Bush 
preaching — Worship under difficulties — A clerical Mrs 
Partington — Biology — A ghost — 'It slips good' — Squatters. 

|Y the middle of March the sun had begun, 
in the very open places, to show some 
power, especially in the little spots shelter- 
ed from the cold by the woods, where his 
beams found an entrance to the soil. Here and there, 
traces of the bare earth began to reappear, and the 
green points of the succulent plants were preparing to 
burst out into their first leaves ; the buds, too, on 
some of the trees, were distinctly visible, but there 
was a long time still before us between these first 
promises of spring and their actual realization. The 
last snowfall came in the middle of April, and, between 
that time and the first of May, the weather could 
hardly be said to be settled into spring. But already, 
towards the third week of March, the birds had made 
up their minds to come back to us, in expectation of 
the opening leaf. Flocks of blue jays, in their beauti- 
ful plumage, blue set off with white and black, flitted 
from the top of one of the lower trees to another, 



1 8 o Suga r -making. 

chattering incessantly. Everything had been desolate 
around us for long, and now to see such signs of 
returning warmth and verdure was unspeakably de- 
lightful. 

With the first opening of spring, and while yet the 
snow lay thick in the fields and the woods, the 
season of maple sugar -making commenced. It 
seemed extraordinary to me for a long time that 
sugar should be got in quantities from a great forest 
tree, the modest sugar-cane having been always in 
my mind the only source of it — except, indeed, the 
sugar-beet, by the growth of which Napoleon tried 
to make France furnish her own sugar, instead of 
having to buy English colonial sugar from any of 
the European ports. But a great quantity is made, 
in Canada and the United States, from the maple, 
both for sale and home use, a vast amount being 
eaten by the native-born Canadians as a sweetmeat, 
just as we eat candy; and very little else is known 
in many parts of the backwoods for household pur- 
poses. The best days for sugar-making are the 
bright ones, after frosty nights, the sap running then 
most freely. The first thing we had to do with our 
1 bush, 7 which is the name given to the maples pre- 
served for sugar-making, was to see that each tree 
was provided with a trough, which we made out of 
pine, or some other soft wood, by cutting a log into 
lengths of perhaps two feet, then splitting each in 
two, and hollowing the flat side so that it would 



Sugar- making. 1 8 1 

hold about a bucketful of sap. We next took narrow 
pieces of wood about a foot long, and made spouts 
of them with a gouge, after which we made a cut in 
each tree with the axe, three or four inches long and 
an inch deep, in a slanting direction, adding another 
straight cut at the lower end of it with the gouge, 
that there might be no leaking, and sinking a hole for 
a spout, where they met ; the gouge that cut the spouts 
making the hole into which they were thrust. Below 
these spouts the troughs were set to collect the sap, 
which was carried as often as they were nearly full 
to another, of enormous dimensions, close to the fire. 
These colossal troughs are simply huge trunks of 
trees hollowed out for the purpose ; ours would have 
held fifty barrels. The emptying into this was made 
every morning and evening until a large quantity 
had been gathered, and then the boiling began in 
large ' kettles/ as they are called, made for the 
purpose, and suspended over the blazing fire from a 
stout pole, resting on two forked branches thrust into 
the earth at each side. The sap once in the kettles 
has a hard time of it : the fires are kept up in royal 
brightness for days together, not being allowed to die 
out even during the night. 

It was a very pleasant time with us, though it was 
hard work, and what with the white snow, the great 
solemn trees, the wild figures dancing hither and 
thither, and our loud merriment, it was very striking 
when the evenings had set in. One of the kettles 



1 8 2 Sugar-making. 

was chosen for ' sugaring off/ and had especially 
assiduous watching. Not a moment's rest could its 
unfortunate contents get from the incessant boiling 
we kept up; fresh sap being added as often as it 
seemed to be getting too dry. In its rage, the sap 
would every now and then make desperate efforts to 
boil over ; but we were on the watch for this also, 
and as soon as it manifested any intention of the 
kind, we rubbed round the inside of the kettle with a 
piece of pork-fat, beyond the limits of which it would 
no more pass than if it had been inside some magic 
circle. My sisters were as busy as we at every part of 
the process, and their poor dresses showed abundant 
and lasting memorials of their labours, in the rents 
made in them by the bushes. What- we were all like, 
from head to foot, after a time, may be more easily 
conceived than described. Our smudged faces, and 
sugary, sloppy clothes, made us all laugh at one 
another. 

As the sap grew thicker with the incessant boiling, 
another element was added to our amusement in the 
stickiness of everything we handled, if we leaned 
against a log at hand we were fast bound ; and the 
pots, pans, ladles, buckets, axe-handles, troughs — 
everything we touched, indeed, seemed to part from 
us only with regret. We were fortunate in having 
no young children amongst us, as they would, of 
course, have been in the thick of the fray, and have 
become half-crystallized before all was over. The 



Sugar-making. 1 83 

1 clearing off* was managed by pouring in beaten 
eggs when the sap was beginning to get thick. This 
served to bring all the impurities at once to the top, so 
that we could readily skim them off. Several ingenious 
ways had been told us of knowing -when the process 
was complete. One was by boring small holes in a 
flat piece of wood, and blowing on it after dipping it 
into the syrup ; the sugar going through the holes in 
long bubbles, if it were boiled enough. Another 
plan was to put a little on the snow, when, if it got 
stiff, it was time to pour all out. Everything that 
would hold it was then, forthwith, put into requi- 
sition, after having been well greased to keep the 
sugar from sticking, and, presently, we had cakes, 
loaves, lumps, blocks, every shape, in fact, of rich 
brown-coloured sugar of our own making. Some, 
which we wanted to crystallize, was put into a barrel, 
and stirred while cooling, which effectually answered 
the purpose. Small holes bored in the bottom made 
the sugar thus obtained whiter than the rest, by al- 
lowing the molasses mingled with it to drain off. We 
kept some sap for vinegar, which we made by simply 
boiling three or four pailfuls until reduced to one, 
and corking this up in a keg for a time. 

For the first and second years the poorer settlers 
have a dreadful job of it in the sugar bush, from not 
having had sufficient time to fence it in from the 
cattle, which from their intrusion are a constant 
annoyance. They poke their great noses into every- 



1 84 Sugar-making. 

thing, and one taste of the sap is very much to them 
what they say the taste of blood is to a tiger, in 
stimulating their thirst for more. In they come, 
braving all risks for a sip of their much-loved nectar ; 
out go the spouts from the trees, over go the buckets 
of sap, and, worse than all, if the brutes succeed in 
drinking any quantity, they are very often seriously, 
if not mortally injured, their indulgence acting on 
them very much as clover does, blowing out their 
stomachs and even bursting them. Another annoy- 
ance at first, is the not having had time to cut out the 
' under brush/ so as to make it possible to take a 
sleigh with barrels on it, from tree to tree, to collect 
the sap, with the help of oxen, and, hence, having to 
carry bucket by bucket to the 'kettles/ often from 
a considerable distance, which is no trifling task, over 
wet snow, and rough ground, thick with every ob- 
struction. We were fortunate in this respect, having 
been warned in time, so that everything was as light 
as such work can be. 

The sugaring-off day was rather a festivity with us, 
as we followed the custom of a good many of our 
neighbours, and invited some young folks to come to a 
carnival on the warm sugar, which is very nice, though 
I should not care to eat as much at a time as some of 
our visitors did. The quantity of sap which a single 
tree yields is astonishing. I think some gave not less 
than fifty gallons, and the loss of it seemed to do them 
good rather than harm. The older and stronger the 



Bush Psalmody. 185 

trees the better the sap, and the more abundant — a 
peculiarity which it would be well for each of us to be 
able to have said of his own life as it advanced. The 
Indians must have been acquainted with the property 
of the maple for ages ; stone sugar-making utensils, of 
their manufacture, comprising stone troughs and long 
stone spouts, hollowed out and pointed for sticking 
into the trees, having often been found in some dis- 
tricts. The few who still survive keep up the habits 
of their ancestors in this, as in other respects, numbers 
of them offering sugar which they have made, for 
barter, each spring. 

Happening to be back in the bush one Sunday, I 
stopped to hear the Presbyterian minister preach • he 
being expected to come there that afternoon. A log 
schoolhouse was made to serve for a chapel — a dark, 
wretched affair, into which, gradually, about seventy 
or eighty people managed to cram themselves. The 
singing was conducted by an old German, whose 
notions of music were certainly far behind those of his 
countrymen generally. The number of grace notes he 
threw in was astounding; but the people joined as 
well as they could, using their powerful lungs with so 
much vigour, and in such bad time and tune, as to be 
irresistibly ludicrous. As to keeping abreast of each 
other through a verse or a line, it seemed never to 
occur to them. A great fellow would roar himself out 
of breath, with his face up to the ceiling and his 
mouth open, like a hen drinking, and then stop, make 



1 86 Worship itnder Difficulties. 

a swallow to recover himself, or, perhaps, spit on the 
floor, and begin again where he left off, in total disre- 
gard of the fact that the others were half a line ahead. 
Who can chronicle the number of c repeats ' of each 
line, or portion of one ? And as to the articulation of 
the words, who could have guessed their meaning from 
the uncouth sounds he heard ? The windows were 
very small ;^and, when filled with people, the place 
was too dark for print to be legible, so that, notwith- 
standing the excessive cold, the minister had to stand 
outside the door through the whole service. About 
the middle of the sermon a brief interruption took 
place, from a freak on the part of the stove, which stood 
in the middle of the room, and was of the common 
kind, with the sides held together by a raised edge on 
the top and bottom. As usual in all Canadian churches 
and meetings, some one was stuffing this contrivance 
full of wood while the sermon was going on, when, in 
a moment, the top got a trifle too much lifted up, and 
down came stove-pipe, stove, fire and wood, in one 
grand rumble, to the ground. As the floor chanced 
to be made only of roughly-smoothed planks, with 
great gaps between each, and the carpenters' shavings 
and other inflammable matter were clearly visible be- 
low, the danger of the whole structure catching fire 
was great; but the congregation were equal to the 
emergency. A number of men were out in a moment, 
to return, the next, with great armfuls of snow, which 
they heaped on the burning mound in such profusion 



Worship under Difficulties. 187 

that every spark of fire was extinguished in a few 
minutes. The bottom of the stove was then prepared 
again for the reception of the sides, the top was once 
more fitted on, the stove-pipes put in their place, the 
rubbish thrust into its proper abode inside, and, by the 
help of a few whittlings made on the spot, a fresh fire 
was roaring in a very short time, enabling the minister 
to conclude in peace and comfort. 

I have seen strange incidents in backwoods wor- 
ship. One church happened to be built on rather 
high posts, leaving an open space of from two to 
three feet below, between the floor and the ground. 
Into this shady retreat a flock of sheep, headed by 
the bell-wether, had made its entrance one Sunday 
morning while we were at worship overhead, and 
presently tinkle, tinkle, tinkle went the bell, now in 
single sounds, and then, when the wearer perhaps 
shook some fly off its ears, in a rapid volley. No- 
body stirred. The clergyman alone seemed incom- 
moded \ but no one thought he was particularly so 
till, all at once, he stopped, came down from the 
pulpit, went out and drove off the intruders, after 
which he recommenced as if nothing had occurred. 
At another place, at the communion, to my astonish- 
ment, instead of the ordinary service, a black bottle 
and two tumblers were brought out, with all due 
solemnity, as substitutes. 

We had a sample of the strength of female intellect, 
one winter, in an old woman, who visited the next 



1 88 A Clerical Mrs Partington. 

village to preach on the Prophecies, and drew the 
whole of the humbler population of the neighbour- 
hood to hear her. Grammar, of course, was utterly 
disregarded ; she knew the obscurer books of Scrip- 
ture by heart, and having a tongue more than 
usually voluble, and an assurance that nothing could 
abash, she did her best to enlighten the crowd 
on no mean topics. Using her left arm as a 
chronological measure, she started with Daniel, at 
the elbow, and reached the consummation of all 
things at her finger-ends, which she figuratively 
called c the jumping off place/ Some of her similes, 
as reported through the township, amused me exceed- 
ingly' as samples of what was just suited to please 
the majority of her hearers. ' There's no more 
grace, sir, in your heart than there's blood in a 
turnip,' was her apostrophe to some imaginary sinner. 
c Them sinners ' she added — ' them hardened sinners, 
needs to be done to as you do to a old black tobaky 
pipe — throw 'em into the fire, and burn 'em — then 
they'll be wite.' Such wandering luminaries are, 
for the most part, importations from the States, where 
they abound almost beyond belief. Another of 
these learned expositors visited us for the purpose 
of giving lectures on ' Biology/ by which he meant 
the effects produced on his patients by looking at 
large wooden buttons which he carried with him; 
a continued stare at them for a time making the 
parties become, as he averred, completely subject, 



Biology. 189 

even in their thoughts, to his will. He would tell 
one he was a pig, and all manner of swinish sounds 
and actions followed. Another was assured he 
could not rise from his seat, and forthwith appeared 
glued to the spot, despite his most violent efforts 
to get up. Whether there was any actual truth 
in the exhibition, through the power of some subtle 
mesmeric laws of which we know little I cannot 
say. Some thought there was; others, that the 
whole was a joke of some young fellows who wished 
to create fun at the expense of the audiences. But 
the exhibitor himself was a real curiosity in his 
utter illiterateness and matchless assurance. He had 
seen somebody else exhibiting in this way, and, like 
a shrewd Yankee, thought he might make a little 
money by doing the same. I wished to gain some 
information from him on the subject if he had any 
to give, and waited, after the crowd had separated, 
to ask him about it \ but all I could get from him 
was the frank acknowledgment that ' this here pro- 
fession was not the one he follered ; he had jist 
been a-coming to Canedy after some lumber — he 
dealt in lumber, he did — and calc'lated that he might 
as well's no make his expenses by a few licturs.' I 
almost laughed outright at this candid avowal, and 
left him. , 

One day, Louis de Blanc, an old Canadian voyageur, 
who had left his arduous avocation and settled near 
our place long before we came, amused me by a story 



190 A Ghost. 

of an apparition he had seen the night before in pass- 
ing the graveyard at the little Catholic chapel on the 
roadside, two miles above us. It was a little plot of 
ground, neatly fenced round with wooden pickets, 
with the wild flowers growing rank and high among 
the few lonely graves, — some tall black crosses here 
and there out-topping them. 'You know Michel 
Cauchon died last week ; well, he always had a spite 
at me ; and, sure enough, last night about twelve 
o'clock, as I was passing the churchyard, didn't I see 
his ghost running across the road in the shape of a 
rabbit. Ah ! how I sweated as I ran home ! I never 
stopped till I got over my fence and safe in bed/ 
The poor rabbit that had caused the panic would, no 
doubt, have been astonished, could it have learned 
the terror it had inspired. 

It was most astonishing to see what kind of food 
some of these old Canadians relished — at least, it was 
so to me. One day having gone over to Le Blanc's 
on some errand, I found his son Louis, a boy of 
twelve or fourteen, with the handle of a frying-pan in 
one hand and a spoon in the other, drinking down 
mouthful after mouthful of the melted fat left after fry- 
ing pork, and, on my silently looking at him, was met 
by a delighted smile and a smack of his lips, accom- 
panied by a rapturous assurance of, i Ah ! it slips 
good.' Fat, however, is only another name for carbon, 
or, it may be said, charcoal, and carbon is needed in 
large quantities to maintain an adequate amount of 



1 It slips good. ' 191 

animal heat in the inhabitants of cold climates, and to 
this must be attributed their craving for grossly fat food. 
Captain Cochrane, in his ' Pedestrian Tour to Behring's 
Straits/ shows us that poor Louis Le Blanc was in this 
respect far outdone by the Siberian tribes living near 
the Arctic Ocean, who relished nothing more than a 
tallow candle, and would prolong the enjoyment of 
one by pulling the wick, once and again, through their 
half-closed teeth, that no particle of the grease might 

be lost. Indeed, my friend Captain L told me 

that, in the Arctic regions, his men had acquired a 
similar relish for ' moulds ' and i dips,' and could eat a 
candle as if it had been sugar-stick. The Esquimaux, 
as we all know, live on the nauseous blubber of the 
whale, cutting it off in long strips, which, Sydney 
Smith facetiously avers, they hold over them by the 
one hand and guide down by the other, till full to the 
mouth, when they cut it off at the lips. The quantity 
of butcher's meat eaten by every one during winter in 
Canada is astonishing. Even the bush people, who 
when living in England hardly ever saw it, eat it vora- 
ciously three times a-day, with a liberal allowance of 
grease each time. What oceans of mutton-oil I have 
seen floating round chops, in some of their houses 1 
How often have I declined the offer of three or four 
table-spoonfuls of pork-oil, as ' gravy ' or * sauce ' to the 
pork itself! Yet it 'slips good,' apparently, with the 
country population generally. The quantity of butter 
these good folks consume is no less liberal. On the 



igi Squatters. 

table of a poor log-house they never think of putting 
down a lump weighing less than a pound, at which 
every one hacks as he likes with his own knife. But 
they need it all, and it is a mercy they have it, to help 
them to withstand the effects of extreme cold and hard 
work. The poorer classes in towns, who have no land 
on which to raise animal food, and little money with 
which to buy it, must suffer very severely. 

There were a few ' squatters ' along the river here 
and there — that is, men who had settled on spots of 
the wilderness without having bought them, or having 
acquired any legal rights, but were content to use them 
while undisturbed in possession, and to leave their 
clearings when owners came forward. They are 
always, in such cases, allowed the value of their im- 
provements, and as, meanwhile, they live entirely rent 
free, their position is far from wholly disadvantageous. 
In the early days of the colony, indeed, there was no 
other plan. The few first comers could hardly be any- 
thing but squatters, as the country was all alike an un- 
cleared wilderness, and there was no inducement to 
pay money for any one spot, had they possessed the 
means. Some of the French families in our neigh- 
bourhood had been settled on the same farm for 
generations, and had at last actually bought their 
homesteads at the nominal price demanded by govern- 
ment ; but the squatters were not yet extinct, though 
they might at one time have had their choice of the 
richest soil at something like fourpence an acre. A 



Squatters. 193 

friend of mine told me that within a period of about 
thirty years he had seen land sold again and again at 
no higher price. On the same lot as that which 
boasted the Catholic chapel, one — a lonely survivor of 
the class — had taken up his abode, many years before 
our time, building a log-house for himself on the 
smallest possible scale, a few yards from the river. 
How he could live in such a place seemed strange. 
It was not more than some ten or twelve feet in length 
and the upper part of it was used as his barn. Here, 
all alone, poor Papineau had lived — no one I ever 
met could tell how long. There was no house in sight ; 
no one ever seemed to go near him, nor did he ever 
visit any neighbour. He was his own cook, house- 
keeper, washerwoman, farm-labourer, everything. I 
often wish I had tried to find out more about him. 
We used, when we passed along the river edge, to see 
him mowing his patch of hay for his cow, or weeding 
his plot of tobacco, for he grew what he required for 
his own use of this as of other things ; and he was 
always the same silent, harmless hermit of the woods. 
It was a strange kind of life to lead. How different 
from that of a Londoner, or the life of the inhabitant 
of any large community ! Yet he must surely have 
been contented, otherwise he would have left it and 
gone where he could have found some society. 



13 



1 94 




CHAPTER XII. 

Bush magistrates — Indian forest guides — Senses quickened by- 
necessity — Breaking up of the ice — Depth of the frost — A grave 
in winter — A ball — A holiday coat. 

IjN those days our local dignitaries were as 
primitive as the country itself. On the 
river, indeed, the magistrates were men 
of education, but in the bush the majority 
possessed no qualifications for acting the part of jus- 
tices. One of them had the misfortune one winter to 
have a favourite dog killed by some mischievous 
person, and feeling excessively indignant at the loss, 
boldly announced that he was prepared to pay a 
reward to any party who would give such information 
respecting the offender as should lead to his convic- 
tion. The wording and spelling of this proclamation 
were alike remarkable. It ran thus : ' Whereas sum 
nutrishus vilain or vilains has killed my dog Seesur, I 
ereby ofer a reward of five dolars to any one that will 
mak none the ofender or ofenders.' He never got 
any benefit from his efforts, but the document, in his 
own handwriting, hung for a long time on the wall of 



Indian Forest Guides. 195 

the next tavern, where all could see it, and not a few 
laugh at its peculiarities. 

I was much struck by an instance, which a long 
journey, about this time, through the woods, gave, of 
the wonderful faculty possessed by the Indians in 
going straight from point to point across the thickest 
forest, where there is apparently nothing to direct 
their course. Having occasion to return nearly 
twenty miles from a back township to which the roads 
had not yet been opened, and not liking to take the 
circuit necessary if I desired to find others, I thought 
myself fortunate in meeting with an Indian, who for a 
small reward offered to take me home by the nearest 
route. When I asked him how he guided himself, he 
could say very little, but hinted in his broken English 
about one side of the trees being rougher than the 
other, though I could detect little or no difference on 
most of them. If it had been in Nova Scotia, I 
could have understood his reasoning, for there the 
side of the trees towards the north is generally hung 
with a long grey beard of moss, from the constant 
moisture of the climate; but in Canada it would take 
very sharp eyes to tell which was the northern and 
which the other sides from any outward sign. They 
must have something more to guide them, I think, 
though what it is I cannot conceive. The senses 
become wonderfully acute when called into extra- 
ordinary service. I have read of prisoners in dark 
dungeons who got at last to be able to see the spiders . 



196 Senses quickened by Necessity. 

moving about in their webs in the corners of their 
cells ; and blind people often attain such a wonderful 
delicacy of touch as to be able to detect things by 
differences so slight as to be imperceptible by others. 
The facility with which they read the books prepared 
for them with raised letters, by simply passing their 
fingers over the surfaces, is well known. The sailor 
can discern the appearance of distant land, or the 
Arab the approach of a camel over the desert, when 
others would suspect neither. An Indian can smell 
the fire of a ' camp/ as they call the place where a 
party rests for the night, when a European can detect 
nothing. There may, therefore, be something which 
can be noticed on the trees, by those who pass their 
whole lives among them, which others are unable to 
discover. The Indians derive a great advantage from 
the skill they possess in tracking the footsteps of men 
or animals over all sorts of ground and among dry 
leaves. This faculty they are enabled to acquire 
owing to the fact that the forests in North America 
are generally open enough underneath to offer easy 
passage ; and moreover, that the soil is little more on 
the surface than a carpet of rotten wood and decaying 
leaves, which easily receives the impression of foot- 
steps, and retains it for a length of time. The moss 
on the fallen trees is another great help in tracking 
the course of either man or beast through the forest ; 
for neither the one nor the other can well make their 
way over them without rubbing off portions here and 



Breaking up of the Ice. 197 

there. Nor is the mere fact of the passage in a par- 
ticular direction all that an Indian can detect from the 
traces on the soil or vegetation. They reason acutely 
from things which others would overlook, and some- 
times surprise one as much by the minute and yet 
correct conclusions they draw respecting what they 
have not seen, as the Arab did the Cadi of Bagdad 
when he described a camel and its load which had 
passed, and whose track he had seen ; maintaining 
that the camel was lame of a foot — because he had 
noticed a difference in the length of the steps ; that 
it wanted a tooth, because the herbage it had cropped 
had a piece left in the middle of each bite \ and, also, 
that the load consisted of honey on one side and ghee 
on the other, because he had noticed drops of each 
on the path as he went along. My Indian made no 
hesitation at any part of our journey, keeping as 
straight as possible, and yet he was forced perpetually 
to wind and turn round trees standing directly in our 
path, and to vault over fallen logs, which he did with 
a skill that I in vain tried to imitate. 

About the beginning of April the ice in the river 
was getting very watery, the strength of the sun 
melting the surface till it lay covered with pools in 
every direction. Yet people persisted in crossing, 
long after I should have thought it dangerous in the 
extreme. It seemed as if it would hold together for 
a long time yet, but the heat was silently doing its 
work on it, and bringing the hour of its final disap- 



198 Breaking up of the Ice. 

pearance every moment nearer. It had become a 
wearisome sight when looked at day after day for 
months, and we all longed for the open river once 
more, At last, about the sixteenth of the month, on 
rising in the morning, to our delight, the whole sur- 
face of the ice was seen to be broken to pieces. A 
strong wind which had been blowing through the 
night had caused such a motion in the water as to 
split up into fragments the now-weakened sheet that 
bound it. It was a wonderfully beautiful sight to look 
at the bright blue water sparkling once more in the 
light, as if in restless gladness after its long imprison- 
ment, the richness of its colour contrasting strikingly 
with the whiteness of the ice which floated in snowy 
floes to the south. At first there was only the broken 
covering of the river, but, very soon, immense quan- 
tities of ice came sailing down from the Upper Lakes, 
jammed together one piece on another, in immense 
heaps, in every variety of confusion, the upturned 
edges fringed with prismatic colours. I found that 
the preparation for this grand upbreaking had been 
much more complete than I had i suspected, from 
looking at it from a distance ; the whole of what 
had appeared quite solid having been so affected by 
the sun that, whichever way you looked at it, long 
rows of air-bubbles showed themselves through it, 
showing that there was little power left in it to resist 
any outward force. The final rupture, though appar- 
ently so sudden, had been in fact steadily progressing, 



Depth of the Frost. 199 

until, at last, the night's storm had been sufficient to 
sweep away in an hour what had previously stood 
the wildest rage of winter. I have often, since, thought 
that it gave a very good illustration of the gradually 
increasing influence of all efforts for good, and of 
their certain ultimate triumph — each day's faithful 
work doing so much towards it, though the progress 
may for long be imperceptible, until at last, w r hen we 
hardly expect it, the opposing forces give w r ay., as it 
were, at once, and forthwith leave only a scattered 
and retreating wreck behind. Gradual preparation, 
and apparently sudden results, are the law in all 
things. The Reformation, though accomplished as if 
at a blow, had been silently made possible through 
long previous generations \ and when the idolaters in 
Tahiti threw away their hideous gods, the salutary 
change was only effected by the long-continued labours 
of faithful missionaries for many years before — labours, 
which, to many, must, at the time, have seemed fruit- 
less and vain. 

The depth to which the frost had penetrated the 
ground was amazing. I had already seen proof of 
its being pretty deep, on the occasion of a grave 
having to be dug in a little spot of ground attached 
to a chapel at some distance from us, for the burial 
of a poor neighbour's wife who had died. The 
ground was deeply covered with snow, which had to 
be cleared away before they could begin to dig the 
grave, and the soil was then found to be so hard that 



200 A Grave in Winter. 

it had to be broken up with pickaxes. Even in that 
earlier part of the winter the frost was nearly two 
feet deep, and it was a touching thing to see the frozen 
lumps of earth which had to be thrown down on the 
coffin. Anything like beating the grave smooth, or 
shaping it into the humble mound which is so familiar 
to us at home, as the token of a form like our own 
lying beneath, was impossible; there could only be 
a rough approach to it till spring should come to 
loosen the iron-bound earth. Strangely enough, 
there were two funerals from the same household 
within the same month, and the two graves were 
made side by side. The mother had died just as she 
was about to start for the house of her daughter-in- 
law who was ailing, a hundred and twenty miles off, 
and the object of her beautiful tenderness had herself 
died before the same month had expired, leaving it 
as her last wish that she should be laid beside her 
friend who had departed so lately. It was now the 
depth of winter — the Arctic cold made everything 
like rock — the sleighing was at its best, and thus the 
journey was made comparatively easy. Laying the 
coffin in a long sleigh and covering it with straw, 
and taking a woman with him to carry a young 
infant to his friends to nurse, the husband set out 
with his ghastly load. There was no fear of delaying 
the burial too long, for the corpse was frozen stiff, 
and might have been kept above-ground for weeks 
without the risk of its thawing. When I used to 




A SCENE IN OUR FIRST WINTER. 



Page 201. 



Depth of the Frost. 20 1 

pass afterwards in summer time, the two graves, 
which were the first in the burial-ground, wore a 
more . cheerful aspect than they had done at first \ the 
long beautiful grass waving softly over them, and 
wild flowers, borne thither by the winds or by birds, 
mingling their rich colours with the shades of green 
around. 

I think the soil must eventually have been frozen 
at least a yard down, if we may judge by its effects. 
Great gate-posts were heaved up by the expansion of 
the earth, when the thaw turned the ice into water; 
for, though ice is lighter than water, it forms a solid 
mass, whereas the swelling moisture pushes the par- 
ticles of earth apart. I have seen houses and walls 
cracked from top to bottom, and fences thrown down, 
from the same cause ; indeed, it is one of the regu- 
► larly recurring troubles of a Canadian farmer's year. 
If anything is to stand permanently, the foundations 
must be sunk below the reach of the frost. It is 
very much better, however, in Canada than in the 
icy wilderness to the north of it. Round Hudson's 
Bay the soil never thaws completely, so that' if you 
thrust a pole into the earth in the warm season, you 
may feel the frozen ground a few feet beneath. It is 
wonderful that any vegetation can grow under such 
circumstances, but the heat of the sun is so great 
that, even over the everlasting ice-bed, some crops 
can be raised in the short fiery summer. Indeed, 
even on the edge of the great Arctic Ocean, along 



202 A Ball. 

the coasts of Siberia, and on some spots of the 
American shore, the earth, brought down by rivers 
and strewn by their floods over the hills of ice, is 
bright with vegetation for a short part of each year 
— in this respect not unlike stony and cold natures 
which have yet, over their unmelting hardness, an 
efflorescence of good — the skin of virtue spread, as 
old Thomas Fuller says, like a mask over the face of 
vice. 

During the winter a great ball was given across the 
river, in a large barn, which had been cleared for 
the purpose, the price of the tickets being fixed at a 
dollar, which included an abundant supper. It was 
intimated, however, that those who had no money 
might pay in ' dicker' — a Yankee word for barter; 
a bundle of shingles, a certain number of eggs, or so 
much weight of butter, being held equivalent to the 
money, and securing a ticket. I was not present 
myself, never having much approved of these mixed 
parties, but the young folks round were in a great 
state of excitement about it, some of them coming as 
far as fifteen miles to attend it. They went past in 
sleigh loads, dashing over the ice on the river as if it 
had been solid ground. The girls were, of course, in 
the height of fashion, as they understood it ; some 
of them exposing themselves in ridiculously light 
clothing for the terrible season of the year, in the 
belief, no doubt, that it made them look the nicer. 
Fashions in those days did not travel fast, and what 



A Holiday Coai. 203 

was in its full glory on the river had been well nigh 
forgotten where it took its rise, like the famous Steen- 
kirk stock, of which Addison says that it took eleven 
years to travel from London to Newcastle. The 
taste shown was often very praiseworthy, but some- 
times, it must be admitted, a little out of the way. 
I have seen girls with checked or figured white 
muslin dresses, wearing a black- petticoat underneath 
to show off the beauties of the pattern ; and I knew 
of one case where a young woman, who was en- 
grossed in the awful business of buying her wedding 
dress, could get nothing to please her until she 
chanced to see, hanging up, a great white window 
curtain, with birds and flowers all over it, which she 
instantly pronounced to be the very thing she wanted, 
and took home in triumph ! There was one gen- 
tleman's coat on the river which might have formed 
a curiosity in a museum, as a relic of days gone by. 
The collar stood up round the ears in such a great 
roll that the shoulders and head seemed set on each 
other, and, as to the tails, they crossed each other 
like a marten's wings, somewhere about the knees, 
But it was in a good state of preservation, and, for 
aught I know, may be the holiday pride of its owner 
to this hour. 

It took a week or two for the last fragments of ice 
to disappear from the river, fresh floes coming down 
day after day from the lakes beyond, where spring 
sets in, later. As they floated past I often used to 



204 Why Ice floats. 

think what a mercy it was that, while water gets 
heavier as it grows cold, until it comes to the freezing- 
point, it becomes lighter the moment it begins to 
freeze, and thus rises to the surface, to form ice there, 
instead of at the bottom. If it continued to get 
heavier after it froze, or if it continued as heavy after, 
as it was immediately before, the rivers and lakes 
would speedily become solid masses of ice, which 
could by no possibility be melted. The arrangement 
by which this is avoided, is a remarkable illustration 
of the" Divine wisdom, and a striking proof of the 
contrivance and design which is in all God's works. 



205 




CHAPTER XIII. 

Wild leeks — Spring birds — Wilson's poem on the bluebird — 
Downy woodpeckers — Passenger pigeons — Their numbers — 
Roosting places — The frogs — Bull frogs — Tree frogs — Flying 
squirrels. 

|Y the first of May the fields were beginning 
to put on their spring beauty. But in 
Canada, where vegetation, once fairly 
started, makes a wonderfully rapid pro- 
gress, it is not like that of England, where spring 
comes down, as the poet tells us — 

' Veiled in a shower oi. shadowing roses,' 

and a long interval occurs between the first indications 
of returning warmth, and the fuller proof of it in the 
rejoicing green of the woods and earth. The wild 
leeks in the bush seemed to awaken from their winter's 
sleep earlier than most other things, as we found to 
our cost, by the cows eating them and spoiling their 
milk and butter, by the strong disagreeable taste. In 
fact, both were abominable for weeks together, until 
other attractions in vaccine diet had superseded those 
of the leeks. It was delightful to look at the runnels 
of crystal water wimpling down the furrows as the sun 



206 Spring Birds. 

grew strong ; the tender grass beneath, and at each 
side, showing through the quivering flow like a frame 
of emerald. The great buds of the chestnuts and 
those of other trees grew daily larger, and shone in the 
thick waterproof- coatings with which they had been 
protected through the winter. Small green snakes, 
too, began to glide about after their long torpidity ; the 
wild fowl reappeared in long flights high overhead, on 
their way to their breeding-places in the far north ; the 
reed-sparrows in their rich black plumage, with scarlet 
shoulders fading off to yellow; the robin, resembling 
his English namesake only in the name, as he belongs 
to the family of thrushes in Canada ; the squirrels 
in their beautiful coats, with their great bushy tails 
and large eyes, stirring in every direction through the 
trees, and every little while proclaiming their presence 
by a sound which I can only compare to the whirr of 
a broken watch-spring ; the frogs beginning to send up 
their thousand croaks from every standing pool — all 
things, indeed, in the animal and vegetable world 
showing signs of joy, heralded the flowery summer 
that was advancing towards us. 

The darling little blue-bird, the herald of spring, 
had already come to gladden us while the snow was 
yet on the ground, flitting about the barn and the 
fence-posts, and, after we had an orchard, about the 
apple-trees, of which it chiefly consisted. About the 
middle of March he and his mate might be seen visit- 
ing the box in the garden, where he had kept house 



Wilsons Poem 011 the B Hue-bird. 20 7 

the year before, or, in places where the orchards were 
old, looking at the hole in the apple-tree where his 
family had lived in preceding summers. He had come 
to be ready for the first appearance of the insects on 
which chiefly he feeds, and, by killing whole myriads 
of which, he proves himself one of the best friends of 
the farmer. There is a poem of Alexander Wilson, 
the American ornithologist, about the blue-bird,' which 
tells the whole story of a Canadian spring so admirably, 
and is so little known, that I cannot resist the pleasure 
of quoting part of it. 

' When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more, 

Green meadows and brown -furrowed fields re-appearing, 
The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore, 

And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steeering ; 
When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing, 

When glow the red maples, so fresh and so pleasing, 
Oh, then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring, 

And hails with his warblings the charms of the season. 

' Then loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring, 

Then warm glows the sunshine, and fine is the weather ; 
The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring, 

And spice-wood and sassafras budding together. 
O then to your gardens, ye house- wives, repair, 

Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure, 
The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air 

That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure. 

i He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree, 

The red-flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms : 
He snaps up destroyers wherever they be, 

And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms ; 



20 8 Downy Woodpeckers. 

He drags the vile grub from the corn he devours, 

The worms from their beds, where they riot and welter ; 

His song and his services freely are ours, 

And all that he asks is, in summer, a shelter. 



* The ploughman is pleased when he gleans in his train, 

Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him ; 
The gardener delights in his sweet, simple strain, 

And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him ; 
The slow ling' ring schoolboys forget they'll be chid, 

While gazing intent as he warbles before 'em 
In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red, 

That each little wanderer seems to adore him/ 



The mention of the blue-bird's activity in destroy- 
ing insects brings to my mind my old friends, the 
woodpeckers, once more. In John Courtenay's 
orchard, which was an old one, several of these birds 
built every season, hovering about the place the whole 
year, as they are among the very few Canadian birds 
that do not migrate. He showed me, one day, the 
nest of one of the species called ' Downy/ in an old 
apple-tree. A hole had been cut in the body of the 
tree, as round as if it had been marked out by a 
carpenter's compasses, about six or eight inches deep 
in a slanting direction, and then ten or twelve more 
perpendicularly, the top of it only large enough to 
let the parents in and out, but the bottom apparently 
quite roomy for the young family. As far as I could 
see, it was as smooth as a man could have made it, 
and I was assured that it was the same in every part. 
It appears that these birds are as cunning as they 



Downy Woodpeckers. 209 

are clever at this art, the two old ones regularly carry- 
ing" out all the chips as they are made, and strew- 
ing them about at a considerable distance from the 
nest, so as to prevent suspicion of its presence. Six 
pure white eggs, laid on the smooth bottom of their 
curious abode, mark the number of each year's 
family, the female bird sitting closely on them while 
they are being hatched, her husband, meanwhile, 
busying himself in supplying her with choice grubs, 
that she may want for nothing in her voluntary im- 
prisonment, The little woodpeckers make their 
first appearance about the middle of June, when one 
may see them climbing the bark of the tree as well 
as they can, as if practising before they finally set 
out in life for themselves. I had often wondered at 
the appearance of the bark in many of the apple and 
pear-trees, which seemed as if some one had fired 
charges of shot into them ; but it was long before I 
knew the real cause. It appears that it is the work 
of the woodpeckers, and many farmers consequently 
think the poor birds highly injurious to their or- 
chards. But there are no real grounds for such an 
opinion, for no mischief is done by these punctures, 
numerous though they be. I have always remarked 
that the trees which were perforated most seemed 
most thriving, no doubt because the birds had 
destroyed the insects which otherwise would have 
injured them. The autumn and winter is the great 
time for their operations, and it is precisely the time 
14 



210 Downy Woodpeckers. 

when the preservation of the fruit, in the coming 
summer, can be best secured. Curious as it may 
seem that such a riddling of the bark can be bene- 
ficial to the tree, it evidently is so. From the ground 
to where the branches fork off there is often hardly 
an inch of the bark which does not bear the mark 
of some grubhunt, and sometimes eight or ten of 
them might be covered by a penny. Farmers, how- 
ever, rarely philosophize, and no wonder that in 
this case they regard as prejudicial what is really a 
benefit. But, on the other hand, they are correct 
enough as to the habits of some of the woodpeckers, 
for greater thieves than the red-headed ones, at some 
seasons, can hardly be found. The little rascals 
devour fruit of all kinds as it ripens, completely 
stripping the trees, if permitted. In fact, they have 
a liking for all good things, they are sure to piok the 
finest strawberries from your beds, and have no less 
relish for apples, peaches, cherries, plums, and pears ; 
Indian corn, also, is a favourite dish with them, 
while it is still milky. Nor do these little plagues 
keep to vegetable diet exclusively; the eggs in the 
nests of small birds are never passed by in their 
search for delicacies. One can't wonder, therefore, that, 
with such plundering propensities, they should lose 
their lives pretty often. 

The flocks of pigeons that come in the early spring 
are wonderful. They fly together in bodies of 
many thousands, perching, as close as they can settle, 



Passenger Pigeons. 211 

on the trees when they alight, or covering the ground 
over large spaces when feeding. The first tidings of 
their approach is the signal for every available gun to 
be brought into requisition, at once to procure a sup - 
ply of fresh food, and to protect the crops on the 
fields, which the pigeons would utterly destroy if they 
were allowed. It is singular how little sense, or per- 
haps fear, such usually timid birds have when col- 
lected together in numbers. I have heard of one man 
who was out shooting them, and had crept close 
to one flock, when their leaders took a fancy to fly 
directly over him, almost close to the ground, to his 
no small terror. Thousands brushed past him so close 
as to make him alarmed for his eyes ; and the stream 
still kept pouring on after he had discharged his bar- 
rels right and left into it, until nothing remained but 
to throw himself on his face till the whole had flown 
over him. They do not, however, come to any part of 
Canada with which I am acquainted in such amazing 
numbers as are said by Wilson and Audubon to visit 
the Western United States. The latter naturalist left 
his house at Henderson, on the Ohio, in the autumn 
of 18 13, on his way to Louisville, and on passing the 
Barrens, a few miles beyond Hardensburgh, observed 
the pigeons flying from north-east to south-west in 
such numbers, that he thought he would try to calcu- 
late how many there really were. Dismounting, and 
seating himself on a knoll, he began making a dot in 
his note-book for every flock that passed, but in a 



212 Their Numbers. 

short time had to give up the attempt, as he had 
already put down a hundred and sixty-three in twenty- 
one minutes, and they still poured on in countless 
multitudes. The air was literally rilled with pigeons ; 
the light of noon-day was obscured as if by an eclipse, 
and the continued buzz of wings produced an inclina- 
tion to drowsiness. When he reached Louisville, a 
distance of fifty-five miles, the pigeons were still pass- 
ing in unabated numbers, and continued to do so for 
three days in succession. He calculated that, if two 
pigeons were allowed for each square yard, the num- 
ber in a single flock — and that not a large one, ex- 
tending one mile in breadth and a hundred and eighty 
in length — could not be less than one billion, one 
hundred and fifteen millions, one hundred and thirty- 
six thousand ! The food required for such a count- 
less host passes our power to realize clearly, for, at half 
a pint a day, which is hardly as much as a pigeon 
consumes, they would eat, in a single day, eight 
millions, seven hundred and twelve thousand bushels. 
To get such supplies from cultivated fields would, of 
course, be impossible, and it is fortunate that they 
hardly ever attempt it, their principal support being 
the vast quantities of beech-mast which the unlimited 
expanse of unbroken forest supplies. 

A curious fact respecting them is that they have 
fixed roosting-places, from which no disturbance ap- 
pears able to drive them, and to these they resort 
night by night, however far they may have to fly to 



Roosliug-places. 213 

obtain food on the returning day. One of them in 
Kentucky, was repeatedly visited by Audubon, who 
found that it was about forty miles in length by three 
in breadth. A fortnight after the pigeons had chosen 
it for the season, he found that a great number of per- 
sons with horses and waggons, guns and ammunition, 
had already established themselves on its borders. 
Herds of hogs had been driven up to fatten on a por- 
tion of those which might be killed. Some of the 
visitors were busy plucking and salting what had been 
already procured, huge piles of them lying on each 
side of their seats. Many trees two feet in diameter 
were broken off at no great distance from the ground 
by the weight of the multitudes that had lighted on 
them ; and huge branches had given way, as if the 
forest had been swept by a tornado. As the hour of 
their arrival approached, every preparation was made 
to receive them : iron pots, containing sulphur, torches 
of pine-knots, poles, and guns, being got ready for use 
the moment they came. Shortly after sunset the cry 
arose that they were come at last. The noise they 
made, though yet distant, was like that of a hard gale 
at sea, when it passes through the rigging of a closely- 
reefed vessel. Thousands were soon knocked down 
by the polemen ; the birds continued to pour in ; the 
fires were lighted 3 and a magnificent as well as won- 
derful and almost terrifying sight presented itself. 
The pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted every- 
where, one above another, until solid masses as large 



2i4 Roosting-places. 

as hogsheads were formed on the branches all round. 
Here and there the perches gave way, and falling on 
the ground with a crash, destroyed hundreds of the 
birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with 
which every spot was loaded. The pigeons were 
constantly coming, and it was past midnight before he 
perceived a decrease in their number. Before daylight 
they had begun again to move off, and by sunrise all 
were gone. This is Audubon's account I myself 
have killed thirteen at a shot, fired at a venture into a 
flock ; and my sister Margaret killed two one day by 
simply throwing up a stick she had in her hand as 
they swept past at a point where we had told her to 
stand, in order to frighten them into the open ground, 
that we might have a better chance of shooting them. 
I have seen bagfuls of them that had been killed 
by no more formidable weapons than poles swung right 
and left at them as they flew close past. The rate at 
which they fly is wonderful, and has been computed 
at about a mile a minute, at which rate they keep 
on for hours together, darting forward with rapid 
beats of their wings very much as our ordinary 
pigeons do. 

The frogs were as great a source of amusement 
to us as the pigeons were of excitement. Wherever 
there was a spot of water, thence, by night and day, 
came their chorus, the double bass of the bull-frogs 
striking in every now and then amidst the inde- 
scribable piping of the multitudes of their smaller 



Bull Frogs. 11$ 

brethren. It is very difficult to catch a sight of these 
bassoon performers, as they spring into the water at 
the slightest approach of danger ; yet you may now 
and then come on them basking at the side of a pond 
or streamlet, their great goggle eyes and black skin 
making them look very grotesque. They are great 
thieves in their own proper element, many a duckling 
vanishing from its mother's side by a sudden snap of 
some one of these solemn gentlemen below. They are 
a hungry race, always ready apparently for what they 
can get, and making short work with small fishes, all 
kinds of small reptiles, and even, I believe, the lesser 
kinds of snakes, when they can get them. These 
fellows are the giants of the frog tribes, and portly 
gentlemen withal, some of them weighing very nearly 
a pound. The shrill croak of the other frogs is like 
nothing else that I ever heard : it is a sort of trill of 
two or three notes, as if coming through water, and it 
rises from so many throats at once that it may be said 
never for a moment to cease. There is a kind of 
frog which lives on the branches of trees, catching the 
insects on the leaves — a beautiful little creature, of so 
nicely shaded a green that it is almost impossible to 
detect it even when you are close to it. Henry and 
I were one day at work in the early summer near a 
young maple, in the back part of the farm, and could 
hardly keep up conversation for the hissing triil of a 
number of them on it; but though the tree was so 
near us we could not, by all our looking, discover any 



216 Tree Frogs. 

of the invisible minstrels. At last the thing became 
so ludicrous that we determined, if possible, to get a 
sight of one ; and as the lower branches began at 
about our own height, one of us went to the one side, 
and the other to the other, to watch. Trill — trill — 
bubble — bubble — bubble — rose all around us, but no 
other signs of the warblers. We looked and laughed, 
laughed and looked again ; the sound was within a 
yard of us, yet nothing could be seen. When almost 
giving up, however, I chanced to look exactly on the 
spot where one was making his little throat swell to 
get out another set of notes, and the rise and fall of 
its breast at once discovered its presence. Henry 
was at my side in a moment, and we could both see it 
plainly enough of course, when our eyes had once 
fairly distinguished it from the green around. It con- 
tinued to sit unmoved on its leaf, and we did not dis- 
turb it. 

One morning we came upon a beautiful little 
creature which had been killed by some means, and 
lay in the yard near the barn. It was evidently a 
squirrel, but differed from the ordinary species in 
one curious particular. Instead of having its legs 
free like those of other squirrels, a long stretch of fur 
extended from the front to the back legs so as to form 
something like wings when spread out. It was a flying 
squirrel, a kind not so common as the others, and 
coming out mostly by night. These extraordinary 
appendages at their sides are used by them to sustain 



Flying Squirrels. 2,17 

them in enormous leaps which they make from branch 
to branch, or from one tree to another. Trusting to 
them they dart hither and thither with wonderful 
swiftness ; indeed, it is hard for the eye to follow their 
movements. What most struck me in this unusual 
development was the evident approach it made 
towards the characteristic of birds, being as it were a 
link between the form of an ordinary quadruped and 
that of a bat, and standing in the same relation to the 
wing of the latter as that does to the wing of a bird. 
It is singular how one class of creatures merges into 
.another in every department of animal life. Indeed, 
it is puzzling at times to distinguish between vegetable 
and animal structures where the confines of the two 
kingdoms join, as the word zoophyte, which really 
means t a living plant/ sufficiently shows. Then there 
is a caterpillar in New Zealand out of whose back, at 
a certain stage of its growth, springs a kind of fungus, 
which gradually drinks up the whole juices of the 
insect and destroys it; but this is not so much an 
approximation of two different orders as an accidental 
union. There are, however, many cases of interlink- 
ing in the different ' families ' into which life is divided, 
the study of which is exceedingly curious and interest- 
ing. 



2l8 




CHAPTER XIV. 

Our spring crops — Indian corn — Pumpkins — Melons — 
Fruits — Wild Flowers. 

j]HE first thing we thought of when the 
spring had fairly set in was to get spring 
wheat, potatoes, Indian corn, pumpkins, 
oats, and other crops into the ground. 
Our potatoes were managed in a very primitive way, 
in a patch of newly-cleared ground, the surface of 
which, with a good deal more, we had to burn off 
before it could be tilled. A heavy hoe was the only 
implement used, a stroke or two with it sufficing to 
make a hole for the potato cuttings, and two or three 
more to drag the earth over them, so as to form a 
' hill/ These we made at about eighteen inches apart, 
putting three or four pumpkin seeds in every third 
hill of the alternate rows. The Indian corn was 
planted in the same way, in hills more than a yard 
apart, pumpkin seeds being put in with it also. It is 
my favourite of all -the beautiful plants of Canada. A 
field of it, when at its finest, is, I think, as charming a 
sight as could well invite the eye. Rising higher than 
the height of a man, its great jointed stems are crested 



Pumpkins. 219 

at the top by a long waving plume of purple, while 
from the upper end of each head of the grain there 
waves a long tassel resembling pale green silk. It is 
grown to a large extent in Canada, but it is most culti- 
vated in the Western United States, many farmers on 
the prairies there growing a great many acres of it. It 
is used in many ways. When still unripe it is full of 
delicious milky juice, which makes it a delicacy for the 
table when boiled. The ripe corn makes excellent 
meal for cakes, &c, and is the best food for pigs or 
poultry, while the stalks make excellent fodder for 
cattle. The poor Indians grow a little corn when 
they grow nothing else. You may see the long strings 
of ears plaited together by the tough wrappings round 
each, and hung along poles round their wigwams to 
dry for winter use. They have been in possession of 
it no one can tell how long. When the May Flower 
anchored, with the Pilgrim Fathers, at Plymouth Bay, 
in Massachusetts, in 1620, they found hoards of it 
buried for safety in the woods around, the Indians 
having taken this plan to conceal it from them. 

The size of the pumpkins is sometimes enormous. 
I have known them so large that one would fill a 
wheelbarrow, and used often to think of a piece of 
rhyme I learned when a boy, in which it was pointed 
out what a mercy it was that they grew on the ground 
rather than aloft, acorns being quite heavy enough 
in windy weather.* They are used in great quantities 

* Le Gland et la Citrouille : Fables de La Fo?itaine^ B. ix. 4. 



220 Melons. 

for ' pumpkin pie/ as the Canadians call it — a prepara- 
tion of sweetened pumpkin spread over paste. They 
use them in this way not only while fresh, but cut a 
great many into thin slices and dry them, that they 
may have this dessert in winter as well as summer. 
They are excellent food for pigs and cattle when 
broken into manageable pieces for them. I don't 
think anything grew with us better than beets and 
carrots, the latter especially. A farmer in our neigh- 
bourhood, who was partial to their growth for the sake 
of his horses and cattle, beat us, however, in the 
quantity raised on a given space, having actually 
gathered at the rate of thirteen hundred bushels per 
acre of carrots. We had a carrot show some years 
after in the neighbouring township, at which this fact 
was stated, and its accuracy fairly established by the 
fact of others having gathered at the rate of as many 
as eleven hundred bushels per acre. I remember the 
meeting chiefly from the assertion of an Irishman pre- 
sent, who would not allow that anything in Canada 
could surpass its counterpart in his native island, and 
maintained that these carrots were certainly very good, 
but that they were nothing to one which was grown 
near Cork, which was no less than eight feet nine 
inches in length ! 

A variety of melons formed one of the novelties 
we grew after the first season. We had nothing to 
do but put them in the ground and keep them free 
from weeds, when they began to ' run ' — as they did, 



Fruits, 221 

far and near, over the ground. It was an easy way 
to get a luxury, for some of them are very delicious, 
and all are very refreshing in the sultry heat of 
summer. They grow in every part of Canada in 
great luxuriance, and without anything like a pre- 
paration of the soil. Indeed. I once saw a great 
fellow of an Indian planting some, which would 
doubtless grow well enough, with his toes — pushing 
aside earth enough to receive the seeds, and then, 
with another motion of his foot, covering them up. 
Cucumbers grew in surprising numbers from a very 
small quantity of seed, and we had a castor-oil plant 
and some plants of red pepper before our doors. We 
had not very much time at first to attend to a vege- 
table garden, and therefore contented ourselves with 
a limited range of that kind of comforts, but it was 
not the fault of the soil or climate, for in no place of 
which I know do the various bounties of the garden 
grow more freely than in Canada. Cabbages, cauli- 
flower, brocoli, peas, French beans, spinach, onions, 
turnip-, carrots, parsnips, radishes, lettuces, beet, 
asparagus, celery, rhubarb, tomatoes, cucumbers, and 
I know not what else, need only to be sown or 
planted to yield a most bountiful return. 

As to fruits, we had, for years, to buy all we used, 
or to gather it in the woods, but it was very cheap 
when bought, and easily procured when gathered. 
Apples of a size and flavour almost peculiar to 
America, pears, plums, cherries, raspberries, currants, 



222 Fruits. 

and strawberries grow everywhere in amazing abund- 
ance. Peaches of the sunniest beauty and most 
delicate flavour are at times in some districts almost 
as plentiful as potatoes ; but we never managed to 
get any from our orchard, want of knowledge on our 
part having spoiled our first trees, which we never 
afterwards exchanged for others. But on the Niagara 
River I have known them sell for a shilling a bushel, 
and every labourer you met would be devouring 
them by the half-dozen. A gentleman within a few 
miles of us took a fancy to cultivate grapes as ex- 
tensively as he could in the open air, and succeeded 
so well that he told me before I left that he had sold 
a year's crop for about a hundred pounds. If we 
had had as much shrewdness as we ought to have 
had, we should have begun the culture of fruit 
rather than of mere farm produce, and I feel sure it 
would have paid us far better. But people coming 
fresh to a country take a long time to learn what is 
best for them to do, and when they have learned, 
have too often no sufficient means of turning to it, 
or, perhaps, no leisure, while many, through disap- 
pointed hopes, lose their spirit and energy. 

The wild fruits we found to be as various as the 
cultivated kinds, and some of them were very good. 
The wild cherries were abundant in our bush, and 
did excellently for preserves. Gooseberries, small, 
with a rough prickly skin and of a poor flavour, were 



Wild Flowers. 223 

often brought by the Indians to barter for pork or 
flour. Raspberries and strawberries covered the open 
places at the roadsides, and along the banks of 
' creeks;' and whortleberries and blue berries, black 
and red currants, juniper berries, plums, and hazel 
nuts, were never far distant We used to gather large 
quantities ourselves, and the Indians were constantly 
coming with pailfuls in the season. It is one of the 
beneficent arrangements of Providence that, in a 
climate so exceedingly hot in summer, there should 
be such a profusion of fruits and vegetables within 
the reach of all, adding not only to comfort but dif- 
fusing enjoyment, and exerting, also, a salutary influ- 
ence upon health. 

What shall I say of the wild flowers which burst 
out as the year advanced? In open places, the 
woods were well-nigh carpeted with them, and clear- 
ings that had, for whatever reason, been for a time 
abandoned, soon showed like gardens with their 
varied colours. The scarlet lobelia, the blue lupin, 
gentian, columbine, violets in countless variety, honey- 
suckles flinging their fragrant flowers in long tresses 
from the trees, campanula, harebell, balsams, asters, 
calceolarias, the snowy lily of the valley, and clouds 
of wild roses, are only a few from the list. Varieties 
of mint, with beautiful flowers, adorned the sides of 
streams or the open meadows, and, resting in a float- 
ing meadow of its own green leaves, on the still water 



224 The 'Bitter Sweet! 

of the river bends, or of the creeks, whole stretches 
of the great white water-lily rose and fell with e very- 
gentle uudulation. 

There was a berry, also, the ' bitter sweet,' which 
was, in the later part of the year, as pretty as any 
flower. At the end of each of the delicate twigs on 
which it grew, it hung in clusters, which, while un- 
ripe, were of the richest orange ; but, after a time, this 
covering opened into four golden points and showed, 
in the centre, a bright scarlet berry. 



22^ 




CHAPTER XV. 

The Indians — Wigwams — Dress — Can the Indians be civilized ? 
— Their past decay as a race — Alleged innocence of savage 
life — Narrative of Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary. 

j|EFORE coming to America we had read 
a great deal about the Indians, and were 
most anxious to see them. I remember 
asking a lady from Canada if she was 
not afraid of them, and was astonished when she 
smiled at the question. Our minds had been filled in 
childhood with stories about the Mohawks, and Hu- 
rons, and other savage nations ; how they rushed on 
the houses of settlers at the dead of night, and, after 
burning their houses, killed and scalped the men, and 
drove the women and children into captivity in the 
woods. Their painted faces, wild feathered dresses, 
and terrible war-cry had become quite familiar to our 
heated fancies ; and we were by no means sure we 
should not have to endure too close an acquaintance 
with them when we became settlers in their country. 
The terrible story on which Campbell's beautiful 
poem, ' Gertrude of Wyoming,' is founded, was re- 
garded as a sample of what we had to fear in our day 
i5 



226 Indian Wigwams. 

in Canada. Moreover, the romantic accounts of In- 
dian warriors in the novels of Cooper, and in the 
writings of travellers, helped to increase both our 
curiosity and dread, and we were all most anxious to 
see the representatives of the red men in our own 
settlement, notwithstanding our extravagant fear of 
them. We were not long left to think what they 
were like, however; for it so happened that there 
was an Indian settlement on land reserved for them 
along the river a few miles above us, and odd families 
ever and anon pitched their wigwams in the bush 
close to us. The first time they did so, we all went 
out eager to see them at once, but never were 
ridiculous high-flown notions doomed to meet a more 
thorough disappointment. They were encamped on 
the sloping bank of the creek, for it was beautiful 
summer weather, two or three wigwams rising under 
the shade of a fine oak which stretched high over- 
head. The wigwams themselves were simply sheets 
of the bark of the birch and bass-trees, laid against 
a slight framework of poles inside, and sloping in- 
wards like a cone, with a hole at the top. An open 
space served for an entrance, a loose sheet of bark, 
at the side, standing ready to do duty as a door, 
if required. I have seen them of different shapes, 
but they are generally round, though a few show the 
fancy of their owners by resembling the sloping roof 
of a house laid on the ground, with the entry at one 
end. Bark is the common material; but in the 



Indian TVigwa??is. 227 

woods on the St Clair river I once saw a family en- 
sconced below some yards of white cotton, stretched 
over two or three rods ; and near Halifax, in Nova 
Scotia, in winter, I noticed some wigwams made of 
loose broken outside slabs of logs, which the inmates 
had laboriously got together. In this last miserable 
hovel, by the way, in the midst of deep snow, with 
the wind whistling through it in every direction, and 
the thermometer below zero, lay a sick squaw and a 
young infant, on some straw and old blankets, to get 
well the best way she could. What she must have 
suffered from the cold can hardly be conceived. No 
wonder so many die of consumption. 

In the group at the wigwams, as we drew near, we 
could see there were both men, women, and children 
— the men and women ornamented with great flat 
silver earrings, and all, including the children, bare- 
headed. Their hair was of jet black, and quite 
straight, and the men had neither beards nor whis- 
kers. Both sexes wore their hair long, some of them 
plaiting it up in various ways. Their colour was 
like that of a brown dried leaf, their cheek-bones 
high and wide apart; their mouths generally large, 
and their eyes smaller than ours ; and we noticed 
that they all had good teeth. This is not, however, 
an invariable characteristic, for sometimes they 
suffer from their decay, like Europeans, and the 
doctor once told me how an Indian had waited for 
him at the side of the road, and, when he came up, 



228 Indian Dress. 

had made signs of pain from toothache, and of his 
wish that the tooth should be removed, which was 
forthwith done, the sufferer departing in great glee at the 
thought of his deliverance. ' The next day,' the doctor 
added, ' the poor fellow showed his gratitude by wait- 
ing for me at the same place with a fine stone pipe- 
head, which he had just cut, and which he handed to 
me with a grunt of goodwill as I came up.' The dress 
of the women consisted of a cotton jacket, a short 
petticoat of cloth, with leggings of cloth underneath, 
which fitted tightly. Those who were doing nothing 
had a blanket loosely thrown over them, though it was 
then hot enough to do without almost any clothing. 
The dress of the men varied, from the merest mockery 
of b clothing to the full suit of a cotton shirt and a pair 
of long leather or cloth leggings. One of them, a great 
strapping man, gave my sisters a great fright, shortly 
after, by walking into the house as noiselessly as a cat, 
and stalking up to the fire for a light to his pipe, with 
nothing on him but a cotton shirt. Pulling out a piece 
of burning wood and kindling his pipe, he sat down on 
a chair beside them to enjoy a smoke, without ever 
saying a word, and went off, when he had finished, 
with equal silence. The little children were naked 
either altogether, or with the exception of a piece of 
cotton round their loins ; and the babies, of which 
there are always some in every Indian encampment, 
peered out with their bright black beads of eyes from 
papooses, either hung up on a forked pole or resting 



Indian Babies. 



2,29 



against a tree. These c papooses ' were quite a novelty 
to us. They were simply a flat board a little longer 
than the infant, with a bow of hickory bent in an arch 
over the upper end, to protect the head, and some 
strings at the sides to tie the little creature safely. 
There it lay or stood, with abundant wrappings round 
it, but with its legs and arms in hopeless confinement, 
its little eyes and thin trembling lips alone telling the 
story of its tender age. To lift it was like taking hold 
of a fiddle, only you could hardly hurt it so easily as 
you might the instrument. Not a cry was to be heard, 
for Indian babies seem always good, and nobody was 
uselessly occupied in taking care of them, for, where 
they were, no injury could come near them. I should 
not myself like to be tied up in such a way, but it 
seems to do famously with them. One of the women 
had her child at her back, inside her blanket, its little 
brown face and black eyes peering over her shoulder. 
Another was putting some sticks under a pot, hung 
from a pole, which rested on the forks of two others ; 
and one or two were enjoying a gossip on the grass. 
The men, of course, were doing nothing, while the 
boys were amusing themselves with their bows and 
arrows, in the use of which they are very expert. We 
had been told that they could hit almost anything, and 
resolved to try them with some coppers, which were 
certainly very small objects to strike in the air; but 
the little fellows were wonderful archers. Each half- 
penny got its quietus the moment it left our ringers, 



230 Indian Habits. 

and they even hit a sixpence which Henry, in a fit of 
generosity, threw up. Birds must have a very small 
chance of escape when they get within range of their 
arrows. It brought to my mind the little Balearic 
islanders, who in old times could not get their dinners 
till they had hit them from the top of a high pole with 
their slings, and country boys I had seen in England, 
whom long practice had taught to throw stones so 
exactly that they could hit almost anything. Indeed, 
there seems to be nothing that we may not learn 
if we only try long enough, and with sufficient earnest- 
ness. 

It used to astonish me to see the Indians on the 
1 Reserve ' living in bark wigwams, close to comfortable 
log-houses erected for them by Government, but which 
they would not take as a gift. I used to think it a 
striking proof of the difficulty of breaking off the habits 
formed in uncivilized life, and so indeed it is ; but 
the poor Indians have more sense in what seems mad- 
ness than I at first supposed. It appears they feel 
persuaded that living one part of the year in the 
warmth and comfort of a log-house makes them un- 
able to bear the exposure during the rest, when they 
are away in the woods on their hunting expeditions. 
But why they should not give up these wandering 
habits, which force such hardships on them, and repay 
them so badly after all, is wonderful, and must be 
attributed to the inveterate force of habit. It seems 
to be very hard to get wildness out of the blood when 



Can the Indians be Civilized ? 23 1 

once fairly in it. It takes generations in most cases to 
make such men civilized. Lord Dartmouth once 
founded a college for Indians in Massachusetts, when 
it was a British province, and some of them were col- 
lected and taught English and the classics, with the 
other branches of a liberal education ; but it was 
found, after they had finished their studies, that they 
were still Indians, and that, as soon as they had a 
chance, they threw away their books and English 
clothes, to run off again to the woods and wander 
about in clothes of skins, and live in wigwams. It is 
the same with the aborigines of Australia. The mis- 
sionaries and their wives have tried to get them taught 
the simple rudiments of English life — the boys to work 
and the girls to sew— but it has been found that, after 
a time, they always got like caged birds beating against 
their prison, and that they could not be kept from dart- 
ing off again to the wilderness. The New Zealander 
stands, so far as I know, a solitary and wonderful ex- 
ception to this rule, the sons of men who were cannibals 
having already adopted civilization to so great an ex- 
tent as to be their own shipbuilders, sailors, captains, 
clerks,, schoolmasters, and farmers. 

It seems almost the necessary result of civilized 
and uncivilized people living together in the same 
country that the latter, as the weaker, should fade 
away before their rivals, if they do not thoroughly 
adopt their habits. The aboriginal inhabitants of 
the Sandwich Islands are rapidly approaching ex- 



232 Their past Decay as a Race. 

tinction in spite of all efforts to secure their perma- 
nence. The vices of civilization have corrupted the 
very blood of the race till they seem hopelessly 
fading away. The natives of New Holland are 
vanishing in the same way, though not, perhaps, 
from the same immediate causes. The Caribs of the 
West Indies, who were so fierce and powerful in the 
days of Columbus and his successors, are now ex- 
tinct. It is much the same with the Red Man of 
America. The whole continent was theirs from 
north to south, and from east to west, but now they 
are only to be found crowded into corners of our 
different provinces, a poor and miserable remnant, 
or as fugitives in remote prairies and forests, for they 
have been nearly banished altogether from the settled 
territories of the States. It is a curious fact, also, 
that this is not the first time widely-spread races of 
their colour have been swept away from the same 
vast surface. Remains of former populations, which 
have perished before those who themselves are now 
perishing, are to be found in many parts, as in the 
huge burial mounds of Ohio, and the ruined cities of 
Guatemala and Yucatan. Canada has now settle- 
ments of Indians in various places, but they are, 
altogether, few in number. One is on Manitoulin 
Island, near the northern shore of Lake Huron, 
where a clergyman of the Church of England, Mr 
Peter Jacobs, himself an Indian, ministers as a 
zealous and efficient missionary \ another, at the 



Indian Decay as a Race. 2^33 

head of River St. Clair, stretches down the bank for 
four or five miles, the picture of neglect and aversion 
to work, in the midst of improvement at each side ; 
one on Walpole Island, down the river, where the 
missionary is one of the most earnest and laborious I 
have had the pleasure of knowing ; one on the banks 
of the River Thames, under the charge of the Mo- 
ravian brethren — the wreck of tribes who left the 
States in the war, last century — forming, with another 
settlement on the Grand River, near Brantford, the 
representatives of those who, in Lord Chatham's day, 
brought down that great orator's terrible denuncia- 
tion of the ' calling into civilized alliance the wild 
and inhuman inhabitants of the woods, and dele- 
gating to the tomahawk and the scalping-knife of 
the merciless savage the rights of disputed property.' 
There are some others to the north and east of 
Toronto, but their numbers altogether are but the 
shadow of what they were once. Old Courtenay, 
speaking to me one day about those on the River St. 
Clair, where he had lived from his childhood, shook 
his head as a wandering, miserable family passed by 
on their wretched ponies, and said, feelingly, 'Poor 
things ! they'll soon follow the rest. I remember 
when there were a hundred on the river for twenty 
there are now. They all go at the lungs. Lying 
out in the wet brings on the terrible cough, and 
they're gone.' The Indian Agent for the west of the 
province told me, however, when in England, lately, 



234 Indian Decay as a Race. 

that they were keeping up their numbers now \ but I 
can hardly see how it is possible, if they do not take 
more care of themselves. The very mocassins they 
wear for shoes are fit, in my opinion, to kill any one 
—mere coverings of deer leather, which soak up water 
like blotting paper, and keep them as if perpetually 
standing in a pool. Then they get spirits from the 
storekeepers, in spite of every effort on the part of 
Government to prevent it, and they often suffer such 
privations for want of food as must tell fearfully on 
their health. I have often watched them passing on 
ponies or a-foot ; if the former, the squaws sitting 
cross-legged on the bare backs, like men, with their 
children round them, and guiding their animals by a 
rope halter ; the men carrying only a gun, if they were 
rich enough to have one ; and I have thought of the 
contrast between their present state and the story of 
their numbers and fierceness, as handed down in the 
old French narratives of two hundred years ago ; how 
they kept the French in perpetual fear, burning their 
houses and even their towns \ how the woods swarmed, 
in different parts, with their different independent 
nations — the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, 
the Ojibbeways — and how, in later years, they played 
so terrible a part in the French and American wars 
with Great Britain. , They seem like snow in summer, 
when only a patch lies here and there, awaiting speedy 
disappearance, of all that covered hill and valley in 
its season. Some tribes, indeed, have passed away 



Alleged Innocence of Savage Life. 235 

altogether since the first landing of Europeans on the 
continent. Those at Nonantum, in Massachusetts, 
for whom the great missionary, John Eliot, translated 
the Bible two hundred years ago, are all gone, so that 
the Book which once spoke to them of the world to 
come, and a copy of which still survives in the museum 
at Boston, now lies open without a living creature who 
can read it. The Mandans, a great tribe in the 
western prairies — the only tribe, indeed, of whom I 
have heard, among the Indians of the present day, as 
building regular fortified and permanent villages and 
towns, have been .entirely swept off within the last 
thirty years by the small-pox, which was brought 
among them by some poor trader. 

It is a striking contradiction to what we sometimes 
hear of the happy innocence of savage life that the 
Indians, when they had all the country to themselves, 
were continually at war with one another. The 
Mohawks, who lived in the northern part of the 
United States, seem especially to have been given to 
strife, often leaving their own side of the great lakes 
to make desolating inroads into Canada, until their 
name became such a word of terror that the very 
mention of it spread alarm in an encampment. Even 
at this day, I have been assured that to raise the cry 
of ' the Mohawks are coming;, ' would strike a delirium 
of panic through a whole settlement. They seem to 
think they are still somewhere not far off, and may re- 
appear at any moment. But though the Mohawks 



236 The Mohawks. 

may have left so blood-stained a memory of themselves, 
it may be safely said that there was hardly one tribe 
better than another. The pages of the old chroniclers 
are red with the continual record of their universal 
conflicts. At the same time, it is curious, as showing 
how widely-spread the terrors of the Mohawk name 
came to be, that the dissolute young men of Addison's 
day, who were wont to find pleasure in acts of violence 
and terror in the streets of London by night, called 
themselves ' Mohocks.' The French appear to have 
themselves been in part to blame for their sufferings 
from the Indians, from the wars they excited between 
rival nations, and the readiness with which they 
furnished their allies with the means of destruction. 
The passions thus kindled too often recoiled upon 
themselves. Their traders had no scruples in supplying 
to any extent the three great cravings of an Indian — 
rum, tobacco, and scalping-knives — the first of which 
led, in innumerable cases, to the too ready use of the 
last. A scalping-knife, by the way, is an ugly weapon, 
with a curved blade like an old-fashioned razor, but 
sharp at the point, and was used to cut off the skin 
from the top of a dead enemy's head, with the hair on 
it, to preserve as a proof of their warlike exploits. The 
number of scalps any warrior possessed being hailed as 
the measure of his renown in his tribe, the desire for 
them became as much a passion with an Indian, as the 
wish for the Victoria Cross with a British soldier, and 
raised an almost ungovernable excitement in their 



A Narrow Escape. 23 7 

breasts when an opportunity for gratifying it offered 
itself. A story is told of a British officer who was 
travelling many years ago in America, with an Indian 
for his guide, waking suddenly one morning and finding 
him standing over him in a state of frenzy, his features 
working in the conflict of overpowering passions like 
those of one possessed, his knife in his hand, ready, if 
the evil spirit triumphed, to destroy his master for the 
sake of his scalp. The officer's waking happily broke 
the spell, and the Indian flung himself at the feet of 
his intended victim, told him his temptation, and 
rejoiced that he had escaped. He had seen him play- 
ing with his long, soft hair, he said, and could not keep 
from thinking what a nice scalp it would furnish, till 
he had all but murdered him to get it* 
' That the very name of ' Indian ? should have 
filled the heart of all who heard it in old times with 
horror is not to be wondered at. However miserable 
they may be now, in great part through their con- 
stant Avars among themselves, they were frightfully 
cruel and bloodthirsty savages when their nations 
and tribes were numerous. We have little idea from 
anything Canada now offers, as to their manners and 
habits, or their character, in the days of their fierce 
power; but it cannot be said that this is owing to 
their being civilized or to their having become more 

* The ancient Scythians, also, scalped their enemies. (Hero- 
dotus, Bk. iv. 64.) The Indians are only Scythians or Tartars 
who have fallen from the pastoral to the hunting life. 



238 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

humane. They are still as wild, to a large extent, 
as the wild beasts of the woods, in all their habits — 
still wanderers — still idle and thriftless— still without 
any arts — and still without anything like national 
progress. It rises only from their being a crushed 
and dispirited remnant, who have lost the bold- 
ness of their ancestors, and are fairly cowed and 
broken by a sense of their weakness. Out of the 
reach of civilization they are still the same as ever ; 
and what that was in the days when they were the 
lords of Canada we may judge from the accounts left 
by the French missionaries, who then lived among 
them. The following narrative, which I translate 
from its quaint old French, has not, I believe, been 
printed before in English, and takes us most vividly 
back to those bygone times. * As a Protestant, I do 
not agree with everything that it contains, but you 
can remember that it is the narrative of a Jesuit 
priest. 

Father Jogues was of a good family of the town 
of Orleans, in France, and was sent to Canada by the 
general of his order in 1636. He went up to the 
country of the Huron s the same year, and stayed 
there till June, 1642, when he was sent to Quebec 
on the affairs of the ' great and laborious mission' 
among that people. Father Lallemant, at that time 
superior of the mission, sent for him, and proposed 

* c Relations des Jesuites dans la Nouvelle France.' Quebec, 

i8 53 . 



Narrative of Father Jogzces. 239 

the voyage, which was a terrible task, owing to the 
difficulty of the roads, and very dangerous from the 
risk of ambuscades of the Iroquois, who massacred 
every year a number of the Indians allied with the 
French. He proceeds to say — 

' The proposition being made to me, I embraced 
it with all my heart. Behold us, then, on the way, 
and in dangers of every kind. We had to disembark 
forty times, and forty times to carry our canoes, and 
' all our baggage past the currents and rapids which 
we met in a voyaye of about three hundred leagues ; 
and although the savages who conducted us were very 
expert, we could not avoid the frequent upsetting of 
our canoes, accompanied with great danger to our 
lives, and the loss of our little luggage. At last, 
twenty-three days after our departure from the Hurons, 
we arrived, very weary, at Three Rivers, whence we 
descended to Quebec. Our business being completed 
in a fortnight, we kept the feast of St Ignatius ; and 
the next day, the 1st of August, 1642, left Three 
Rivers to retrace our steps to the country whence we 
had come. The first day was favourable to us ; the 
second, we fell into the hands of the Iroquois. We 
were forty in number, divided among different canoes ; 
and that which carried the advance guard having dis- 
covered, on the banks of the great river, some tracks 
of men's feet newly impressed on the sand and clay, 
made it known. When we had landed, some said they 



240 Narrative of Father Jognes. 

were traces of an enemy, others were sure they were the 
footmarks of Algon quins, our allies. In this conten- 
tion of opinion Eustache Ahatsistari, to whom all the 
others deferred on account of his deeds of arms and 
his bravery, cried out — "Whether they are friends 
or enemies does not matter \ I see by their tracks 
that they are not more in number than ourselves ; 
let us advance, and fear nothing." 

'We had hardly gone on a half league when the 
enemy, hidden in the grass and brush, rose with a 
loud cry, discharging on our canoes a perfect hail of 
bullets. The noise of their arquebuses so terrified a 
part of our Hurons that they abandoned their canoes, 
and their arms, and all their goods, to save themselves 
by flight into the depths of the woods. This volley 
did us little harm \ no one lost his life. One Huron 
only had his hand pierced by a ball, and our canoes 
were broken in several places. There were four 
Frenchmen of us, one of whom, being in the rear- 
guard, saved himself with the Hurons, who fled before 
approaching the enemy. Eight or ten Christian 
catechumens joined us, and having got them to offer a 
short prayer, they made head courageously against the 
enemy, and though they were thirty men against a 
dozen or fourteen, our people sustained their attack 
valiantly. But perceiving that another band of forty 
Iroquois, who were in ambush on the other side of 
the river, were crossing to fall on them, they lost 
heart, and like those who had been less engaged, they 



Narrative of Father Jogues. 241 

fled, abandoning their comrades in the melee. One 
Frenchman — Rene Goupil — since dead, being no 
longer supported by those who followed him, was 
taken, with some Hurons who had proved the most 
courageous. I saw this disaster from a place which 
effectually concealed me from the enemy, the thickets 
and reeds furnishing a perfect screen, but the thought 
of thus turning it to account never entered my mind. 
Could I, I said to myself, leave our French, and these 
good neophytos, and these poor catechumens, without 
giving them the helps with which the true Church 
of God has entrusted me ? Flight seemed to me 
horrible. It is necessary, said I to myself, that my 
body should suffer the fire of this world to deliver 
these poor souls from the flames of Hell — it is neces- 
sary that it should die a momentary death to procure 
them life eternal. 

6 My conclusion being thus taken without any great 
struggle in my mind, I called one of the Iroquois who 
was left behind to guard the prisoners. He, seeing 
me, was at first afraid to approach, fearing an ambush. 
" Approach/' said I, " fear nothing ; conduct me to 
the French and Hurons you hold captive." He 
advances, and having seized me, adds me to the 
number of those who, in a worldly point of view, 
would be regarded as utterly wretched. Meanwhile, 
those who were chasing the fugitives led back some of 
them, and I confessed and made Christians of those 
who were not so. At last they led back that brave 
16 



242 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

chief, Eustache, who cried out on seeing me, that he 
had sworn to live and die with me. Another French- 
man, named William Couture, seeing the Hurons take 
to flight, saved himself, like them, in the forest; but 
remorse having seized him at the thought of abandon- 
ing his friends, and the fear of being thought a 
coward tormenting him, he turned to come back. 
Just then five Iroquois came upon him, one of whom 
aimed at him but without effect, his piece having 
snapped, on which the Frenchman instantly shot him 
dead. His musket was no sooner discharged than 
the four were on him in a moment, and having 
stripped him perfectly naked, well nigh murdered him 
with their clubs, pulled out his nails with their teeth, 
pounding the bleeding tips to cause greater agony ; 
and, finally, after stabbing him w T ith a knife in one 
hand, led him to us in a sad plight, bound fast. On 
my seeing him I ran from my guards and fell on his 
neck, but the Iroquois seeing us thus tenderly affected, 
though at first astonished, looked on in silence, till, all 
at once, thinking, perhaps, I was praising him for 
having killed one of their number, they ran at me 
with blows of their fists, with clubs, and with the 
stocks of their arquebuses, felling me to the ground 
half dead. When I began to breathe again, those who, 
hitherto, had not injured me, came up and tore out 
the nails of my fingers with their teeth, and then bit, 
one after another, the ends of the two forefingers thus 
stripped of their nails, causing me great pain — grinding 



Narrative of Father Jogues. 243 

and cranching them to pieces, indeed, as if they had 
been pounded between two stones, so that frag- 
ments of the bones came out. They treated the good 
Rene Goupil in the same way, but they did no harm 
for the time to Hurons, so enraged were they at the 
French for not accepting peace on their terms the year 
before. 

' All being at last assembled, and their scouts having 
returned from chasing the' fugitives, the barbarians 
divided their booty among themselves, rejoicing with 
loud cries. While they were thus engaged I revisited 
all the captives, baptizing those who had not been so 
before, and encouraging the poor creatures, assuring 
them that their reward would far surpass their tortures. 
I perceived after making this round that we were 
twenty-two in number, not counting three Hurons 
killed on the spot. 

'Behold us, then, being led into a country truly 
strange to us. It is true that, during the thirteen days 
we were on this journey, I suffered almost insupport- 
able bodily torments and mortal anguish of spirit ; 
hunger, burning heat-besides the imprecations and 
threats of these leopards in human shape-and in 
addition to these miseries, the pain of our wounds, 
which, for want of dressing, rotted till they bred 
worms, caused us much distress; but all these things 
seemed light to me, in comparison with my internal 
suffering at the sight of our first and most ardent 
Christians among the Hurons in such circumstances. 



244 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

I had thought they would be pillars of the new-born 
Church, and I saw them become victims of these 
bloodthirsty savages. 

c A week after our departure from the banks of the 
St Lawrence, we met two hundred Iroquois in eager 
search for Frenchmen, or their Indian allies, wherever 
they could meet them. Unhappily, it is a belief 
among these barbarians, that those who are going to 
war are prosperous in proportion as they are cruel to 
their enemies ; and, I assure you, they made us feel 
the effect of this unfortunate opinion. Having per- 
ceived us they first thanked the sun for having caused 
us to fall into their hands, and those of their country- 
men, and then fired a salute in honour of their 
victory. This done, they went into the woods, to 
seek for clubs or thorns, as their fancy led them ; 
then, thus armed, they formed a lane, a hundred on 
each side, and made us pass, naked, down this bitter 
path of anguish, each one trying who could strike 
oftenest and hardest. As I had to pass last, I was 
the most exposed to their rage, but I had hardly 
got half through, before I fell under the weight of 
this hail of reiterated blows ; nor did I try to rise ; 
partly, indeed, because I wished to die on the spot. 
Seeing me down, they threw thems'elves oh me, and 
God alone knows the length of time I endured this, 
and the number of blows which were inflicted on my 
body, but sufferings borne for His glory are full of 
joy and honour ! The savages, seeing I had fallen, 



Narrative of Father Jogues. 245 

not by chance, but that I wished to die, took a cruel 
compassion on me, lifting me up, in the intention of 
keeping me so that I should reach their country alive, 
and then led me, all bleeding, to an open knoll. 
When I had come to myself they made me descend, 
tormented me in a thousand ways, made me the butt 
of their taunts, and recommenced beating me, letting 
off another hail of blows on my head, neck, and 
body. They then burned one finger, and cranched 
another with their teeth, and pressed and twisted 
those which were already mangled, with the rage of 
demons. They tore my wounds open with their nails, 
and when my strength failed they put fire to my arms 
and thighs. My companions were treated pretty 
nearly like myself. One of the barbarians, advancing 
with a great knife, seized my nose in his left hand 
to cut it off, but, though he attempted this twice, he 
was hindered in some way from completing his 
design. Had he done it, they would at last have 
killed me, for they always murder those who are much 
mutilated. 

' Having so far satisfied their bloodthirstiness on our 
poor frames, these savages departed to pursue their 
route, while we continued ours. 

6 On the tenth day, we reached a place where it was 
necessary to quit the water-side and travel by land. 
This journey, which was about four days long, was 
very painful, he who was appointed to guard me* not 
being able to carry all his plunder, and giving me a 



246 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

part to carry on my back, all flayed as it was. We 
ate nothing for three days but a little wild fruit, which 
we pulled in passing. The heat of the sun at the 
height of the summer, and our wounds, weakened us 
much, so that we had to walk behind the others, and 
they being much scattered, I told Rene he should try 
to save himself; but he would not leave me, though 
he could easily have got off. I, myself, could not 
think of forsaking my poor little flock. On the eve 
of the Assumption we reached a small stream, a 
quarter of a league from the first town of the Iroquois, 
where we found the banks lined', on both sides with a 
number of men armed with clubs, which they used on 
us with their wonted ferocity. There were only two 
of my nails remaining, and these they wrenched off 
with their teeth, tearing away the flesh underneath, 
and baring it to the very bones with their nails, which 
they let grow very long. 

'After they had thus satisfied their cruelty, they 
led us in triumph into this first village, all the young 
people being ranged in rows outside the gates, armed, 
some with sticks, others with iron ramrods, which 
they get from the Dutch. * They made us march — a 
Frenchman at the head, another in the middle, of the 
Hurons, and myself the last. We were made to fol- 
low one another at equal distances, and, that our tor- 
mentors might be the better able to beat us at their 

* Probably the Dutch settlers in what is now the western part 
of New York State. 



Narrative of Father Jogites. 247 

ease, some Iroquois threw themselves into our line to 
keep us from running off, or avoiding any blows. I was 
naked, with the exception of a shirt, like a criminal, 
and the others were entirely naked, except poor Rene 
Goupil, to whom they showed the same favour as to 
me. We were hardly able to reach the stage pre- 
pared for us in the middle of the village, so fearfully 
beaten were we; our bodies livid and our faces 
bloody. Nothing white remained visible of Rene's 
face but his eyes, he was so disfigured. When mounted 
on the stage we had a short respite, except from 
their violent words, which did not hurt us, but it 
was soon over. A chief cried out that they must 
- 4 fondle the Frenchman," which was no sooner said 
than done — a wretch, leaping on the scaffold and 
giving each of us three great blows with a stick, 
but not touching the Hurons. Meanwhile, the others 
who were standing close to us, drawing their knives, 
treated me as the chief — that is, used me worst — the 
deference paid me by the Hurons having procured me 
this sad honour. An old man took my left hand, and 
ordered an Algonquin woman to cut off one of my 
fingers, which she did, after some reluctance, when 
she saw she would be forced to obey, — cutting off my 
left thumb. They did this to the others also. I 
picked up my thumb from the scaffold, but one of my 
French companions told me that if they saw me with 
it they would make me eat it, and swallow it raw, and 
that I had better throw it away, which I did. They 



248 Narrative of Father yogttes. 

used an oyster-shell to cut the thumbs of the others, 
to give them more pain. The blood flowing so that 
we were like to faint, an Iroquois tore off a piece of 
my shirt and tied up the wounds, and this was all the 
bandage or dressing we got. When evening came we 
were brought down to be led to the wigwams to be 
made sport for the children. They gave us a little 
boiled Indian corn for food, and made us lie down on 
a piece of bark, tying our arms and legs to four stakes 
fixed in the ground, like a St Andrew's cross. The 
children, emulating the cruelty of their parents, threw 
burning embers on our stomachs, taking pleasure in 
seeing our flesh scorch and roast. What hideous 
nights ! To be fixed in one painful position, unable 
to turn or move, incessantly attacked by swarms of 
vermin, with our bodies smarting from recent wounds, 
and from the suffering caused by older ones in a state 
of putrefaction, with the scantiest food to keep up 
what life was left ; of a truth these torments were 
terrible, but God is great ! At sunrise, for three fol- 
lowing days, they led us back to the scaffold, the 
nights being passed as I have described.' 

Thus far we have given the father's own words, and 
must condense what remains to be told : — 

After the three days were over the victims were 
led to two other villages, and exposed naked, under 
a burning sun, with their wounds untended, to the 



Narrative of Father Jogues. 249 

same miseries as they had passed through in the first. 
At the second, an Indian, perceiving that poor Cou- 
ture had not yet lost a finger, though his hands 
were all torn to pieces, made him cut off his own 
forefinger with a blunt knife, and when he could not 
sever it entirely the savage took and twisted it, and 
pulled it away by main force, dragging out a sinew 
a palm in length, the poor arm swelling instantly 
with the agony. At the third village, a new torture 
was added, by hanging poor Jogues by his arms, so 
high that his feet did not touch the ground ; his en- 
treaty to be released only making them tie him the 
tighter, till a strange Indian, apparently of his own 
accord, mercifully cut him down. At last some 
temporary suspension of his sufferings approached. 
Fresh prisoners arrived, and a council determined that 
the French sho,uld be spared, in order to secure 
advantages from their countrymen. Their hands being 
useless from mutilation, they had to be fed like infants, 
but some of the women, true to the kindly nature of 
their sex, took pity on their sufferings, and did what 
they could to relieve them. Meanwhile, Couture was 
sent to another village, and Pere Jogues and Rene 
remained together. 

Unfortunately, however, of the three, only Couture 
could reckon upon the preservation of his life. It 
was the custom with these savages, that when a pri- 
soner was handed over to some particular Indian, to 
supply a blank in his household, caused by the death 



250 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

of any of its members in battle, he was forthwith 
adopted as one of the tribe, and was thenceforth safe ; 
but as long as he was not thus bestowed, he might be 
killed, at the caprice of any one, without the least 
warning. Of the three, only Couture had been thus 
guaranteed security of life; the two others felt that 
their existence still hung by a hair. Nor was this 
long without being put to a sad proof, for Rene — full 
of zeal for what he thought would benefit the souls of 
the young Indians — being in the habit of making on 
them the sign of the cross, had taken a child's hand 
before making the sign on its brow, when an old man, 
seeing him, turned to its father, and told him he 
should kill that dog, for he was doing to his boy what 
the Dutch had told them would not only do no good, 
but would do harm. The advice was speedily acted 
on ; two blows of an axe on his head* as the two were 
returning from prayer outside the village., stretched 
the martyr lifeless, and poor Rene's body was then 
dragged to the bed of a rivulet, from which a heavy 
storm washed it, through the night, so that his com- 
panion could never again find it. This was in Sep- 
tember, 1642, two months after their leaving Three 
Rivers. The position of Father Jogues after this 
murder may easily be imagined. His life, he tells 
us, was as uncertain as the stay of a bird on a branch, 
from which it may fly at any moment. But the good 
man had devotion sufficient to bear him up, amidst all 
evil and danger. His mind, kept in constant excite- 



Narrative of Father yogues. 251 

ment, found support in comforting dreams that soothed 
his slumbers. In these visions he would see, at times, 
the village in which he lived, and in which he had 
suffered so much, changed to a scene of surpassing 
glory, with the words [of Scripture, written over its 
gates, ' They shall praise Thy name ; ' and at other 
times his thoughts in sleep would be brightened by 
the belief that the agonies he had endured were sent 
by his Father in Heaven to fit him for eternal joy, so 
that, he tells us, he would often say of them when he 
woke, ' Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me/ 

At the beginning of winter he was, at last, given to 
a family as their slave, to attend them in the chase, to 
which they went off thirty leagues, staying two months 
at it. Cold though it then was, his only clothing all 
this time was a shirt and a poor pair of drawers, with 
leggings, and ragged shoes of soft leather. The 
thickets tore his skin, and his feet were cut by the 
stones, clods, and sharp edges of ice. Finding him 
useless in hunting, they set him to woman's work, 
requiring him to gather and bring in logs for the fire. 
Half naked, chapped and hacked in every part by 
the cold, this was a change he rejoiced in, as it gave 
him the great advantage of privacy, which, he tells us, 
he employed for eight and ten hours together in 
prayer, before a rude cross which he had set up. But 
his masters having found out how he spent his time, 
broke his cross, felled trees close to him to terrify 
him, and when he returned to the wigwam with his 



25 2 Narrative of Father Jogties. 

load, played him a thousand cruel tricks, to get him 
to desist. One would level his bow at him, as if about 
to shoot him • another would swing his axe over his 
head, and tell him he must quit his charms. They 
declared that his sorceries spoiled their hunting ; and 
at last conceived such a horror of hirn, that they 
thought his touch pollution, and would not let him 
use anything in the wigwams. Had he been willing 
to join them in their ways, it would have fared 
differently with him; but, starving as he had been, 
he refused to partake of the venison which they had 
in abundance, because they offered to the spirit of 
the chase all that they took. As soon as he knew of 
this, he told them plainly he could not eat what had 
been devoted to the devil ; and fell back on his boiled 
Indian corn. 

Having learned that some old people were about 
to return to the village, Jogues asked permission to 
go thither with them. They sent him, therefore, 
but without a tinder-box and without shoes, though 
the snow was now very deep on the ground, it being 
in December. Moreover, they made him carry a 
huge burden of smoked meat for the thirty leagues 
of journey they had to take, weak and wretched 
though he was. At one place, crossing a deep rivulet, 
over a felled tree, a squaw, who had an infant and a 
heavy load on her back, and was in poor health, 
slipped off and fell into the stream; on which 
Jogues, seeing that her burden was making her sink, 



Narrative of Father Jogttes. 253 

threw off his own, and plunged in, and cutting away 
the thongs, carried her to the bank, where the prompt 
kindling of a fire by the Indians alone saved the 
three from being frozen to death. The little child 
being very ill, he tells us ' he baptized it forthwith ; 
and in truth/ he adds, ' sent it to Paradise, as it died 
two days after/ However we may differ from him 
as to the efficacy of his act, we cannot withhold our 
admiration of the noble spirit that made him cling 
to what he thought a work of duty and love, even in 
his greatest trials. 

He had hardly reached the village when he was 
sent back again with a sack of corn, so heavy, that 
what with weakness and the slipperiness of the 
ground, he lost his way, and found himself back again 
in the camp before he knew where he was. This 
misadventure was a new cause of suffering for him. 
Every ill name that could be thought of was given 
him, and, what was much worse, he was put into a 
wigwam with the same man who had torn out his 
nails, and who was now lying in the utmost filth and 
wretchedness, through the effects of some putrid 
disease. For fifteen days he had to serve as a slave 
amidst these horrors, until his owners,, returning from 
the chase, took him to their own dwelling. 

During the winter, he managed, at great risk, to 
visit the different villages of the Indians, to encourage 
the Huron captives. His patience, meanwhile, was 
gaining him the respect even of such monsters as 



254 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

these. The mother of his host seemed touched 
by his bearing, and this was increased by his kind- 
ness to one who had been among his most terrible 
enemies, but who was' now lying covered with sores. 
Jogues visited him frequently, consoled him in his 
illness, and often went to seek berries for him to re- 
fresh him. About March he was taken by his hosts 
to their fishing-ground — a deliverance from the noise 
of the village which was delightful to him, though he 
still had the same work of collecting and bringing 
in wood for the fire. He was now treated com- 
paratively kindly, but even here he was in danger. 
A war-party had been gone for six months, and not 
having been heard of, were thought to have been 
destroyed, and this was, by at least one, who had a 
relative with it, attributed to the enchantments of the 
missionary. But, providentially, the day before he 
was to have been killed, the warriors arrived, bringing 
twenty prisoners, in torturing whom Jogues was for- 
gotten. They forthwith began public rejoicings; 
scorching, roasting, and at last, eating these poor 
victims. ' I think/ says Jogues, ' that the devils in 
hell must do something the same, at the coming of 
souls condemned to their flames.' 

At the end of April, a Sokokiois chief made his 
appearance in the Iroquois country, charged with 
presents, which he came to offer for the ransom of 
the missionary, who was known among the tribes by 
the name of Ondesson. The presents, he said, came 



Narrative of Father Jogues. 2$$ 

from the French, and he had a letter from the 
governor for Ondesson. This embassy raised the 
credit of Jogues, and got him, for the time, some 
pity ; but they took the presents, and kept him still 
in captivity. At last, having been sent, in 1643, to 
a fishery, which was near a station of the Dutch, he 
was rescued from the clutches of his tormentors by 
their head man, who, however, having left shortly 
after, handed him to the care of a subordinate, at 
whose hands he suffered extremely from hunger and 
thirst, and from the fear of falling , again into the 
power of the Iroquois. After a time, he was taken 
down the Hudson to what was then the settlement of 
Manhattan, but is now the city of New York, and 
from thence sailed to France, by way of England. 
On the 15th January, 1644, he returned to the college 
of his order, at Rennes. In the spring of 1645, he 
was ready, once more, to return to Canada, and 
sailed from Rochelle to Montreal ; and peace having 
been made in the interval with the Iroquois, he was 
chosen as the pioneer of a new mission among them. 
On the 1 6th May, 1646, in company with French 
officials, he set out on a preliminary journey, to make 
the necessary preparations, and to ratify the peace, 
returning to Three Rivers in the end of June. 

Resolved to lose no time, now that the way was 
clear, in organizing his mission, though with a pre- 
sentiment that it would end in his death, he proceeded, 
three weeks after, once more on his way to the scene 



256 Narrative of Father Jogues. 

of his former sufferings, in company with a young 
Frenchman, in a canoe, taking with him some 
Hurons as guides. But he went only to meet the 
death he had foreboded. He had hardly reached 
the Iroquois country when he and his companion 
were attacked, plundered, stripped naked, and sub- 
jected to the same menaces and blows which he had 
experienced before. A letter from the Dutch traders, 
some time after, related how their captors, on the 
very day of their arrival, told them they would be 
killed, adding, that they might be of good cheer, 
for they would not burn them, but would simply cut 
off their heads, and stick them on the palisades of 
the village, to let^ other Frenchmen, whom they ex- 
pected to take, see them on their coming. The 
immediate cause of their murder was, that the 
Indians insisted that Jogues had left the devil 
among some luggage he had given them to keep 
for him, and that their crop of Indian corn had 
thus been spoiled. On the 18th October, 1646, the 
end of his sufferings came at last. Having been 
called from his wigwam to the public lodge on that 
evening, to supper, an Indian, standing behind the 
door, split his skull, and that of his companion, with 
an axe ; and on the morrow, the gate of the village 
was garnished with their disfigured heads. Only one 
division of the nation, however — that with which 
he lived, whose distinguishing sign or title was that 
of the Bear — seems to have been privy to their 



Narrative of Father Jognes. 257 

murder. The other two— the divisions of the Wolf 
and the Tortoise— resented the massacre, as if com- 
mitted on two members of their own tribes. 

^ And thus we take leave of the Jesuit martyr and 
his remarkable story. 



17 



2 5 8 




CHAPTER XVI. 

The medicine-man — Painted faces — Medals — An embassy — 
Religious notions — Feast of the dead — Christian Indians — 
Visit to the Indians on Lake Huron — Stolidity of the Indians 
— Henry exorcises an Indian's rifle. 

[HE great man among all tribes of Indians 
that are not very greatly changed ns the 
medicine-man — a kind of sorcerer who 
acts at once as priest and physician. 
Arrayed in a strange dress of bear-skins, or painted 
leather, with his head hidden in the scalp of some 
animal, or decorated with an extraordinary crest of 
feathers, this dignitary still reigns with more power 
than the chiefs in the outlying portions of British 
America. Their modes of treatment are strange 
enough. A poor infant in one of the settlements lay 
ill of fever, and the mother, not knowing what to 
do for it, summoned the medicine-man to her aid. 
He came with his assistant, in full costume, and, 
having entered the wigwam where the poor little crea- 
ture lay, in a bark cradle, filled with the dust of rotten 
wood, began his doctoring by hollowing a mystic circle 
in the ground round it, within which none but those 



The Medicine-Man. 25 9 

he permitted were to enter. Then, taking a drum 
which he had with him, or rather a double tambourine, 
filled inside with little stones, he commenced rattling 
it over the child, singing meanwhile with all his might. 
The noise was enough to have given a fever to a 
person in health, and was fit to have killed a sick baby- 
outright ; but he kept thumping away, first at its ears 
— the little creature crying with fright — then at its 
back and its sides, till the sound was well-nigh deafen- 
ing. Next came a mysterious course of deep breath- 
ing from the bottom of his stomach, all round the 
child's body, which completed his treatment. Strange 
to say, the child got better, and of course the faith in 
the conjurer greatly increased. ' There was a black 
thing in its inside/ he said, ' which needed to be 
driven out, and he had done it by the noise and sing- 
ing/ It must, indeed, have been in spite of him, 
instead of by his help, that the poor child was 
restored. 

The dress of the Indians varies at different times, 
and according to the degree of civilization they have 
reached. Here and there you meet with one who has 
adopted European clothing, but these are rarely seen. 
They held a feast on a mound, by the road-side, in the 
summer after we went to the river — men, women, and 
children mustering to take part in it. Their clothing, 
excepting that of one or two, was about the same as 
usual — that is, a shirt and leggings, or the shirt only ; 
but their faces showed a most elaborate care in the 



260 Indian Dancing. 



cb ' 



6 getting up/ Paint of different colours was lavishly 
expended on them. One had his nose a bright blue > 
his eyes, eyelids, and cheeks, black \ and the rest of 
his face a lively red. Others had streaks of red, 
black, and blue, drawn from the ears to the mouth. 
Others were all black, except the top of the forehead, 
and the parts round the ears, and the tip of the chin. 
Two lads amused me by the pride they evidently took 
in their faces ; that of the one being ornamented by a 
stroke of vermilion, broad and bright, upwards and 
downwards-, from each corner of the mouth, in a 
slanting direction; while that of the other rejoiced in 
a broad streak of red and blue, straight across his 
cheeks, from each side of his nose. The solemnities 
consisted of speeches from their orators, which were 
fluent enough, and were accompanied with a great 
deal of gesticulation, but were totally incomprehensible 
to me. Then followed a dance, in which all the men 
joined ; some women, sitting in the middle, beating a 
rude drum with a bone, while the men formed in a 
circle outside, and each commenced moving slowly 
. round, lifting his legs as high as possible, at the risk, 
I thought, of throwing the dancer before him off his 
balance, by some unhappy accident, which, however, 
they were skilful enough to avoid. Meanwhile, the 
orchestra kept up a monotonous thumping, accompa- 
nied by a continuous grunting noise, which passed for 
singing. There could be nothing more ludicrous 
than to see them with all solemnity paciag round, each 



Indian Loyalty. 161 

with a leg in the air, as if they had been doing some- 
thing awfully important. Dancing ended, the reward 
of their labours followed. A huge kettle, hanging 
from a stout pole, over a fire close by, proved to have 
for its contents the carcase of a large dog — one of the 
many who prowl round all wigwams — but it must 
have been fattened for the occasion, as they are lean 
enough generally. Hands and mouths were the only 
inplements for the repast, but they served the purpose. 
The poor dog made its way, with amazing rapidity, 
down the crowd of hungry throats ; but the sight so 
disgusted me that I hastily left them. 

The Indians are very loyal in every part of British 
America. A number of old men are still alive who 
hold medals for their services in the war of 18 12-14 # 
with the United States, and very proud they are 
of them. I remember finding a deputation from 
some tribe returning from a visit to the Governor- 
General, on board one of the lake steamers, and was 
struck with the great silver medal, almost like a 
porter's badge, which the eldest wore on his breast, 
with the well-known profile of King George III. on 
it. By the way, one of the three or four Indians of 
the party was the handsomest man of the race I ever 
saw — tall, of full figure, with exquisite features, and 
soft curling hair. He must surely have been 
partly white. The dress they wore showed strikingly 
the meeting of the old wildness and the new civiliza- 
tion. That of the old bearer of the medal consisted of 



262 Indian Loyalty. 

a very broad-brimmed, high-crowned, and broad- 
belted black hat — such a hat as I never saw except 
among the Indians, and which must have been made 
from a pattern specially designed to please them by 
its extraordinary size; a light brown shabby frock- 
coat, with very short tails and large brass buttons : 
a great white blanket thrown over it, and a pair of 
ordinary trowsers, with mocassins on his feet, com- 
pleting the costume. There was a great slit in his 
ears for ornaments ; a string of wampum hung round 
his neck, and in one hand lay a long Indian pipe, 
while, from the other, the skin of a fox, made into a 
tobacco-pouch, hung at his side. One of the others 
had leggings instead of trousers, with broad bands 
of beads at the knees to fasten them, and a bag 
about the size of a lady's reticule, with a deep fringe 
of green threads nine or ten inches long, all round 
it, hung from his arm. I have no doubt that even 
the feeble remnant of the race that still survives 
would at once offer to fight for our Queen if their ser- 
vices should ever unfortunately be needed. * Their 
great mother across the waters ' is the object of as 
much loyal pride to them as to any of her count- 
less subjects. Some years ago a United States 
officer was removing some Indians from the settled 
parts to the other side of the Mississippi, and had 
encamped one day, when he saw a party approach- 
ing. Taking out his glass, he found that they were 
Indians, and forthwith sent off an Indian from his 



Religions Notions. 263 

own band to meet them, with the stars and stripes 
on a flag. No sooner was the republican banner 
displayed than, to the astonishment of the officer, the 
strange Indian unrolled the Red Cross of St George, 
and held it up as that under which he ranged. The 
American wanted him to exchange flags, but he 
would not; for, said he, 'I live near the Hudson 
Bay Company, and they gave me this flag, and told 
me that it came from my great mother across the 
great waters, and would protect me and my wife and 
children, wherever we might go. I have found it is 
true as the white man said, and / will never part 
with if 

One of the most intelligent Indians I ever met was 
a missionary among his countrymen in the Far West, 
who happened to be on a steamer with me. He gave 
me a great deal of information respecting the religious 
notions of his people, one part of which I thought very 
curious. He said that the Indians believed that, at 
death, the spirits of men went to the west, and came 
to a broad river, over which there was no bridge but 
the trunks of trees laid endwise across. On the farther 
side stretched prairies abounding with all kinds of 
game, and every possible attraction to the Indian, to 
reach which, every one, as he came, ventured on the 
perilous path that offered the means of getting over. 
But the wicked could not, by any means, keep their 
footing. The logs rolled about under them till they 
slipped into the river, which bore them hopelessly away. 



264 Feast of the Dead. 

The good Indian, on the contrary, found everything 
easy. The logs lay perfectly still beneath his tread, 
some kind influence kept him safely poised at each 
treacherous step, and he landed safe and happy, 
amidst loud welcomes, on the amber bank beyond. 
The poor creatures seem to think that their friends 
need many things after death to which they have been 
used in life. Lonely graves may be often seen in the 
woods, or, perhaps, they only seem lonely from the 
others having sunk down, and in them, as in those 
which are gathered together in the common burial- 
places of the different reserves, beneath a little birch- 
bark roof raised over them, the surviving friends put, 
periodically, presents of rice, tobacco, and other 
Indian delights. It used to be the habit in all parts of 
Canada, as I have been told it still is in the distant 
places of the Continent, to gather all the dead of a nation 
together, from time to time, and bury them in a 
common grave. Twelve years were allowed to pass, 
and then the old men and the notables of the different 
divisions of the tribe assembled and decided when 
they would hold 'the feast,' for so they called it, so as 
to please each section and the allied tribes as well. 
This fixed, as all the corpses had to be brought to the 
village where the common grave had been dug, each 
family made arrangements respecting its dead, with a 
care and affection which were very touching. If they 
had parents dead in any part of the country, they 



Feast of the Dead. 26$ 

spared no pains to bring their bodies ; they lifted 
them from their graves, and bore them on their 
shoulders covered with their best robes. On a given 
day the people of each village went to their own 
cemetery, where the persons who had charge of it — for 
there were parties appointed to this office — raised the 
bodies in presence of the survivors, who renewed the 
grief they exhibited on the day of their first burial. 
All the corpses were ranged side by side, and, being 
uncovered, were exposed thus for a considerable time, 
that all around might see what they would themselves 
some day become. You may think what a sight this 
must have been ; some of the bodies mere skeletons, 
some like mummies, and others mere shapeless cor- 
ruption. Those which were not reduced to skeletons 
were, after a little, stripped of their flesh and skin, 
which, with the robes in which they had been buried, 
were burned. The bodies which were still uncorrupted 
were merely wrapped in skins, but the bones, when 
thoroughly cleaned, were put in sacks or in robes, and 
laid on their shoulders, and then covered with another 
skin outside. The perfect corpses were put on a kind 
of bier, and, with all the rest, were taken each to its 
own wigwam, where the several households held, each, 
a feast to its dead. 

They have a curious idea respecting the soul, as the 
reason of this strange custom — at least those of them 
who, not being as yet Christians, still practise it. They 



%66 Feast of the Dead. 

think that the dead have two souls, distinct and 
material, but each endowed with reason. The one 
separates itself from the body at death, and hovers 
over the burial-place till the Feast of the Dead, after 
which it is turned into a turtle-dove, or goes straight 
to the Land of Spirits. The other is, as it were, 
attached to the body, and still remains in the common 
grave, after the feast is over, never leaving it unless to 
enter the body of an infant, which the likeness of many 
of the living to those who have died seems to them a 
proof that they do. 

When the feast is over, all the dead of each village 
are taken to a large wigwam, set apart for the purpose, 
and filled with poles and rods, from which the perfect 
bodies and the bags of bones are hung, along with 
countless gifts which the relatives present, in the name 
of the dead, to some of their living friends. This dis- 
play of their riches accomplished, it remains only to 
take the ghastly loads to the common grave on the day 
appointed, which they do with frequent cries, which 
they say lighten the weight and secure the bearers 
from disease. At the central rendezvous, the same 
hanging of the corpses on poles, and the same display 
of presents, is again made, and then, amidst terrible 
cries and confusion, the whole are put into the general 
burial-pit, which is lined underneath with sable furs, to 
make the spirits happy in their homes in the other 
world. But they do not bury the presents with them, 



Christian Indians. 267 

nor the outer skins in which they were wrapped ; 
these they retain for themselves. In some tribes, in 
former times, a great mound or barrow heaped over 
the spot marked the resting-place of the multitude, 
in others the ground was simply levelled, and then, 
after rejoicings in their own wild way till they were 
tired, the living crowd dispersed, each party to its own 
village."* 

A great change has come over the customs and feel- 
ings of many of the Indians, since missionaries went 
among them, and though in old settlements you often 
meet Pagans even yet, there are others who give the 
best proofs that they are true Christians. It is delight- 
ful to see them on the Sabbath, wending their way, 
calm and in a right mind, to their lowly church, through 
the glades of the forest ; and wild though the sound 
often is, I have listened to their singing the glorious 
praises of God with an interest I hardly ever felt in any 
more civilized gathering. One of the hymns which 
have been made expressly for them, and of which they 
are especially fond, has always struck me as'particularly 
touching, by its exact appreciation of an Indian's feel- 
ings, and its remarkably skilful adaptation to their 
broken English. I feel sure it has never appeared in 
print before, at least in Britain, as I got it from a 

* Nothing like this is done in Canada now, so far as I know ; 
but in the ' Relations des Jesuites ' it is spoken of as the general 

custom. 



268 Indian Hymn. 

missionary in Nova Scotia, who knew the author, him- 
self a missionary, and told me it existed only in manu- 
script so far as he knew. Here it is : 

'THE INDIAN'S PRAYER. 

€ In de dark wood, no Indian nigh, 
Den me look heb'n, and send up cry, 

Upon my knee so low ; 
Dat God on high, in shiny place, 
See me in night wid teary face, 
My heart, him tell me so. 

* Him send him angel, take me care, 
Him come himself, and he arum prayer, 

If Indian heart do pray. 
Him see me now, Him know me here, 
Him say, * Poor Indian, never fear, 

Me wid you night and day.* 

* So me lub God wid inside heart, 
He fight for me, He takum part, 

He sabe em life before. 
God lub poor Indian in de wood, 
And me lub He, and dat be good, 

Me pray Him two time more. 

* When me be old, me head be grey, 
Den Him no leab me, so Him say, 

" Me wid you till you die." 
Den take me up to shiny place, 
See white man, red man, black man face, 
All happy 'like* on high.' 

One day, in the second summer we were on the 
river, the clergyman asked me, in passing, if I would 
like to go up Lake Huron with him, on a missionary 

* i. e., alike. 



Lake liter on. 16 q 

visit to a settlement of Indians, and of course I told 
him I should. It was soon settled when we should 
start, which we did in a little boat, two men going with 
us to take charge of it. We had oars with us, but the 
boat was too heavy for their easy use, and we trusted 
to a sail, the cord of which one of us held in his hand, 
to prevent any sudden gust from upsetting us. We 
were soon out on the glorious Lake Huron, which, 
like all the great lakes, cannot be distinguished from 
the sea by ordinary eyes ; but we did not attempt to 
get out of sight of the coast, intending to run in to it 
if any sudden storm should rise. As darkness set in 
the sight overhead was beautiful beyond anything, I 
think, I ever saw. The stars came out so large and 
bright that it seemed as if you could see behind them 
into the depths beyond. They seemed to hang down 
like globes of light from the great canopy of the 
heavens. It was deliciously calm, the soft wind from 
behind, as it gently swelled the sail, serving to make 
the feeling of repose the more perfect. After sailing a 
day and a night, and the half of the next day, we at last 
reached the point where we were to land — a narrow 
tongue of sand, along which a stream, flowing through 
an opening in the sand-hills that line the coast, crept 
into the lake. It took us the rest of the afternoon to 
row as far as we wished, and to get our supper of beef 
and some hard eggs, with a cup of tea, without milk, 
which we got ready at a fire on the beach. The water 
we had to use was oui greatest trouble. It was nearly 



270 A Night of II or r or s. 

the colour of ink, from the swamps through which it 
had flowed, and made our tea the reverse of pleasant 
in taste ; but there was no choice, so that we made 
ourselves as contented as possible. Accommodation 
for the night was soon provided by stretching the sail 
over the mast, which was laid on two forked poles, a 
yard or so from the ground. This gave room for two \ 
the two others were to sleep on the ground without 
this apology for a covering. A huge fire, kindled close 
to us, served to keep off the mosquitoes, or rather was 
intended to do so. Wrapping an old buffalo robe, or 
a quilt, round each of us, we were soon stretched out 
to try to get sleep; but its sweet delight kept far 
enough from us all. Oh ! the horrors of that night. 
The mosquitoes came down like the wolves on a fold, 
piercing through smoke and fire, and searching in the 
dark but too successfully for our noses, cheeks, and 
hands. The ants, too, were in myriads, and made their 
way up our boots to any height they thought proper. 
Once in, there was no getting these plagues out. We 
rose, went through every form of trouble to rid our- 
selves of them, but some still remained to torment us 
after each effort. Then the smoke itself was fit to 
make one wretched. It swept in, in clouds, as often 
as the fire was stirred. At last, however, morning 
came, and, with its first dawn, we were up for the 
day : but what figures we presented ! My worthy 
friend's nose seemed to have been turned upside 
down in the night, the mosquito-bites having made 



Negotiation with an Indian. 271 

it much thicker near the eyes than at the bottom. It 
was irresistibly laughable to us all, except the unfortun- 
ate bearer, who was really unwell, partly through the 
mosquitoes, partly through the exposure. Luckily for 
our breakfast, a Potowattomie Indian — a short old 
man, in a shirt, leggings, and mocassins, and crowned 
with a tremendous hat — came in sight as we were busy 
preparing it with some more of the villanous water. 
He was soon amongst us, desiring to see what we 
were, and what we were doing, and, fortunately for us, 
the contents of the kettle attracted his attention, 
With unmistakeable signs of disgust, he urged us to 
throw it out forthwith, and very kindly went to the 
side of the river, and, by scooping out the sand at the 
side, close to the stream, with his hands, obtained at 
once a little well of water clear as crystal, which we 
most gladly substituted for the liquid we had been 
using. Meanwhile, an animated negotiation was being 
carried on with our benefactor as to the terms he 
wished to make for guiding us to the Indian settle- 
ment — grunts and dumb show having to do the 
work of words. A few charges of powder and shot, 
at last, secured his services, and ere long, all being 
ready, we set out. Our route led us directly inland, 
over the huge barrier of sand, with which the edge 
of Lake Huron, at that part, is guarded. From its 
top we looked, far and near, over the forest, which, 
close at hand, was very miserable and stunted, from 
the hindrance to any chance of drainage offered by 



2yi An Indian Settlement. 

the hill on which we stood. At a distance, however, 
it rose in all its unbroken and boundless grandeur — 
the very image of vastness and solitude. Descending 
the inner slope, we were soon making the best of our 
way across the brown water of successive swamps, 
with thin trees felled, one beyond another, as the 
only bridges. i Mind your feet there, George,' cried 
my friend, as I was making my way, Blondin fashion, 
across one ; but he had more need to mind his own, 
for the next minute he was up to the knees in water 
of the colour of coffee. An hour's walking brought 
us to the settlement, which consisted of a number of 
wigwams, raised among very small clearings, a log- 
house at one part marking the interpreter's house — 
himself an Indian. A messenger having been sent 
round, we had before long a congregation in the 
chapel, which was a log-house, without seats, but with 
a desk at the one end, the other being appropriated, 
in great part, to the door, which was large enough to 
have served for the door of a barn. The squaws, in 
blankets, and blue cloth petticoats, and leggings, with 
large silver brooches on their bosoms, and bare heads, 
squatted down on the one side ; the men, in all varie- 
ties of costume, from a shirt upwards, took possession 
of the other \ the door standing open during the 
whole service, so that we, at the upper end, looked 
out into the forest, which was close at hand. The 
dogs, of course, formed part of the audience, some of 
them lying in the open space of the middle, and 



Stolidity of the Indians. 273 

others at the door. One, which was more trouble- 
some than the others during the service, walked 
straight up the middle, and stood looking the clergy- 
man in the face, to his no small annoyance., but was 
soon made to suffer for his want of respect. One of 
the men rose, silently as a shadow, and slipped up 
behind the four-legged hearer till he came close to his 
long tail ; on this his hands closed in a moment, and 
then away went the poor brute, with a great swing, 
over his head, in a succession of somersaults to the 
door, out of which, when it reached the ground, it 
rushed with prolonged howls, and was seen no more 
while we were there. Not a countenance moved 
while this extraordinary ejectment was being effected, 
and the Indian himself resumed his place as solemnly 
as if he had been performing only an ordinary duty. 
It was very slow work to speak through the inter- 
preter, but the Indians sat it out with patient fortitude, 
trying as it must have been to these wild creatures, so 
little prone to sedentary occupation, to listen to such 
a tedious process. A walk back, after all was over, 
brought us to our boat, which we had left on the 
beach, and in due time, after a pleasant sail, we swept 
down the St Clair once more, glad enough to get 
safely home again. 

The perfect stolidity of the Indians under any 

amount of excitement is wonderful — unless, indeed, 

under the influence of whiskey, or excited by the 

pursuit of hunting — for, usually, you might as well 

18 



2 74 Stolidity of the Indians. 

expect to move the features of an image as theirs. 
When railroads were introduced into Canada, they 
were a source of wonder to every one who had not 
seen them, the Indians alone excepted. They did not 
even spare a grunt, but marched into the carriages 
with the same composure as if they had been familiar 
w r ith them from their childhood. In any house they 
may enter, you can detect no sign of curiosity, still 
less of w T onder, in any of their movements. The 
same cast-iron physiognomy is kept from the first to the 
last, whatever objects of interest you may have to 
show them. 

It is very hard for us to realize how difficult it is to 
get a new idea into such minds. A minister of my ac- 
quaintance, who lived among the Indians, told me what 
great trouble he had to teach them the use of a mill. 
He had got them to grow some wheat, and to cut it 
down, by doing a large part of the work himself; and 
when the time came to turn it into flour, he had to 
help to put it into sacks, to help to get it into a canoe, 
to go with them to the mill, to show them how to 
give it to the miller, get back the flour, get it put into 
the sacks again, and then into the canoe, and paddle 
home. Everything had to be acted before they would 
do it themselves. 

As might be expected, they are superstitious in 
proportion to their ignorance. One day, an Indian 
came to Henry in great distress, telling him his gun 
was bewitched, and could not shoot straight, and 



Indian Superstition. 175 

asking him if he could make it right. Henry, of 
course, knew that the poor fellow was only labouring 
under a delusion, and at once told him he would 
make it all right. He, therefore, asked him to let 
him have it for the night, his wish being to have an 
opportunity of cleaning it thoroughly. Having made 
it all right, on the Indian's return he handed it to him, 
with all solemnity, telling him it was perfectly cured 
now. ' Me shoot ten days — get nothing,' said the 
unfortunate sportsman. * It's all right, now, though,' 
replied Henry, assuring him, besides, that there were 
no more witches about it. Sometime after, we were 
surprised by an Indian's coming to the house with the 
hind legs of a deer, telling us they were from the 
Indian for the 'man cured gun.' Henry was from 
home at the time, and as he had said nothing about 
his unbewitching the weapon, the gift was a mystery 
until his return. The gratitude shown for so small a 
favour was very touching, and impressed us all in the 
Indian's favour. He must have published Henry's 
wonderful powers, as well as rewarded them, for that 
same winter another Indian came to him in the woods, 
where he happened to be, with the same story, that 
his rifle was bewitched, and would not shoot. With a 
good deal of sly humour, Henry determined to play 
the conjurer this time, as he had no chance of getting 
the weapon home. He therefore told the Indian to 
sit down, and then drew a circle round him and the 
infected rifle, and proceeded to walk mysteriously 



276 Indian Stiperstition. 

round him, uttering all the while any amount of gib- 
berish he could think of, and making magic passes in 
all directions. After repeating this a number of times, 
he took the rifle into his hands, and proceeded to 
examine it carefully, and seeing that it was in perfect 
order, he announced the ceremony to be complete, 
and handed it back again, with the assurance that he 
was not to be afraid of it, that he had only to take a 
good aim, and that there were no witches about it now. 
The Indian grunted thanks, and made off; and Henry 
heard no more of it till, some months after, when he 
happened to be in a neighbouring village, the subject 
of his charms, to his surprise, came up to him, and 
told him ' he must be a great doctor — Indian's gun 
shoot right ever since he cured it.' Henry answered 
that it had needed no cure, and that he had only done 
what he did because the Indian would not have 
believed his rifle was right if he had not done some- 
thing. What the effect was on the Indian's notions I 
know not, but we certainly heard no more of bewitcn- 
ed rifles. 



2 7 7 




CHAPTER XVII. 

The humming-bird — Story of a pet — Canada a good country for 
poor men — A bush story of misfortune — Statute labour 
— Tortoises — The hay season — Our waggon -driving — Henry 
and I are nearly drowned — Henry falls ill — Backwood doctors. 

|T was in May of the second year I first 
noticed the humming-bird. There are 
different species in Canada in summer, but 
all seem equally beautiful. When I first 
saw one, it was like a living gem, darting hither and 
thither in the open round the house, never resting but 
for a few moments, while it poised itself on its lovely 
wings, which seemed motionless from the very rapidity 
of their vibration. No bird flies so fast, small though it 
be, so that it is impossible to follow it as it darts from 
spot to spot. Later in the season, a bunch of flowers, 
at an open window, was pretty sure to bring one quiver- 
ing over them, preparatory to thrusting its long thin 
"bill into the cups, to drink the sweets that lay at the 
bottom. Sometimes in the evenings, they might be 
seen, for half an hour at a time, darting at the little 
clouds of flies which dance in the air, under the 
branches of the trees, or in the open, — retiring to a 



278 The H tcrnming- Bird. 

twig to rest when tired. They seem, for a great part 
of their time, to feed on such insects, the stomach of 
several humming-birds, I have heard, having been found 
full of them when opened. There is a charming 
account in a Philadelphia magazine of one which 
showed greater familiarity with man than has ever 
been known from any other of its species. # One of 
the young ladies of a family was sitting at an open 
window, when a humming-bird flew in, very feebly, 
and dropped on the floor, apparently exhausted. To 
'pick it up was the work of a moment ; and the 
thought that it might be tired and hungry, after a 
long flight, forthwith set its friend to try whether 
she could tempt it to eat anything. Mixing some 
cream and sugar, and pouring a little of it into the 
cup of a bell-shaped flower, the beautiful creature, 
to her great delight, at once began to sip, and gather- 
ing strength as he did so, by and by flew off through 
the window once more. Next day, and every day 
thenceforth, through the summer, the little thing 
came back about the same time, for another repast, 
fluttering against the window, if it happened to be 
shut ; and whenever he had not got enough, flying 
backwards and forwards close at hand, in great rest- 
lessness, till a fresh supply had been manufactured. 
It did not matter who was in the room, the sight of 
the flower held out brought him in, when he was 
waiting for his meal; indeed, his natural timidity 
* Quoted in Gosse's c Canadian Naturalist.' 



Canada good for the Poor. 279 

seemed to have been entirely laid aside. Late in 
the season, a day passed without his visit, and they 
found that, in all probability, he had flown off to the 
south for the winter. Whether he came back again 
the next spring has not been recorded. 

Some of the settlers in the bush, back from the 
river, were striking examples of the benefits a poor 
man may get from coming to such a country as Canada. 
I used often to go back on various errands, and was 
always delighted with the rough plenty of farmers 
who, not many years ago, had been labourers at home, 
with only a few shillings a week for wages. Now, by 
steady labour and sobriety, many amongst them were 
proprietors of a hundred acres of excellent land, and 
sat down at each meal to a table which even well-to-do 
people in England are not in the habit of enjoying. 
But there were some cases of failure, which no less 
strongly brought the peculiar circumstances of the 
country before me. Ten miles away from us, and 
lying back from the river, a person who had been 
a baker in London, but had determined to turn 
farmer, had settled some years before. He built 
a log-house, and cleared a patch, but it was slow 
work, as he had to bring on his back all the flour and 
potatoes, or what his household needed, the whole way 
from the river, through the forest, over swamps, and 
every other difficulty that lay in his road. After a time 
he fell ill of fever and ague — the great curse of new or 
low-lying districts in Canada and the States. For eight 



280 A Bush Story of Misfortune. 

months he could do no work, and meanwhile his family 
were driven to the greatest straits to keep themselves 
alive. At last, he was able to get about once more. 
Everything was behind with him, but he was still 
unbroken in spirit. But now came a new trial : a 
great tree which had been left standing near his house, 
fell down across it, breaking in the roof, though for- 
tunately without killing any one. The axe and 
patience offered the means of escaping from this 
misfortune also ; and, before long, the ' tree was 
removed, and the shattered dwelling restored. For 
awhile all went on well enough after he had thus once 
more got on his feet. But his troubles were not yet 
at an end. Coming home one night with a heavy 
load, on his weary ten miles' road from the front, in 
crossing a swamp on a round log, his foot slipped, and 
a sharp stake ran through his boot deep into the flesh, 
impaling him, as it were, for a time. How he got 
home I know not, but of course he left his load behind 
him, and had to crawl to his house as best he cotild. 
This last calamity fairly crushed his hopes of success ; 
and, on recovering, he abandoned his land, moved 
with his family to a town eighty miles off, and took 
service at his old trade, in which, after a time, he was 
able to recommence business on his own account. 

When the roads got pretty dry in the summer-time, 
we were all summoned by the ' pathmaster ' of our 
neighbourhood — a dignitary who is elected annually 
to superintend the repairs of the different roads — to do 



Statute Labour, 



281 



our statute labour. As money to pay a substitute was 
out of the question, we had, of course, ourselves to 
shoulder shovels, and turn out for the six days' work 
required of us. My three elder brothers, and a number 
of neighbours, were on the ground on the day appointed, 
but they were an hour or two later than they would 
have required any labourers they might have hired to 
have been, and they forthwith commenced their task. 
It was amusing to see how they managed to get through 
the time, what with smoking, discussing what was to 
be done, stopping to chat, sitting down to rest, and all 
the manoeuvres of unwilling workers. A tree had to 
be cut up at one part, and hauled together for burning 
off; a ditch dug from nowhere to nowhere, at some 
other point; a bridge to be repaired, at a third, by 
throwing a log or two across it, in the places from 
which broken ones had been drawn out ; a mud hole 
filled up, at a fourth ; and the corduroy road, over a 
swamp, made more passable, at a fifth, by throwing a 
large quantity of branches on it, and covering them 
deeply with earth, so as to get a smooth surface. ' I 
guess I've done more for the Queen nor she's done for 
me,' said John Court enay, as he sat down for the tenth 
time. ' I'll take it easy now, the boss is up the road,' 
the ' boss ' being the pathmaster, who had gone off to 
another gang at some distance. You may be sure our 
engineering was very poorly done, but it was all we 
had to look to to keep the roads passable at all in the 
wet weather. The vacant lots, every here and there, 



282 Tortoises. 

were the greatest hindrance to any improvements 
worthy the name, nobody caring to repair the road 
through an absentee's land, though all suffered from 
its being neglected. 

There were a number of tortoises in the ponds in 
the woods and by the roadside, and they used to give 
us a good deal of amusement. They were of all sizes, 
but generally not very large, and were really beautiful 
in the markings of their shells, when you had them 
close at hand. But to get near enough for this was 
the difficulty. They used to come out of the water, 
in the middle of the day, to sun themselves, or to sleep, 
on the dry logs which lay over it, and the great point 
was to try to keep them from plumping off in an 
instant, rather than making to the land. It was all 
but hopeless to try it, but we would not give it up. 
Sometimes we came upon them away from the water 
a little, and then we had it all our own way with them. 
They move very awkwardly on the ground, and seem 
too stupid to do even as much as they might, but they 
must not be handled incautiously, for they give terrible 
snaps with their horny mouths, which are like the 
sides of a smith's vice for hardness and strength of 
hold. A poor Scotchman who came out one summer, 
found out this to his cost. He had been coming 
down the road, and saw a large tortoise, or ' mud turtle,' 
as the Canadians call them, apparently sound asleep 
at the edge of the creek. Of course he thought he had 
come on a treasure, and determined to catch it if 



Tortoises. 283 

possible. Stealing, therefore, breathlessly, up to the 
spot, he made a grab at it before it suspected danger, 
and in a minute had it swinging over his shoulder by 
its foreleg. The leg was short, and the round shield 
that covered the creature was therefore close up to his 
head. He thought he would take it home, and show 
the good folks this wonder of the woods ; perhaps he 
thought of taming it, or of making combs for his wife 
out of its back shell. At any rate, on he jogged quite 
proud of his acquisition. He would soon get over the 
five miles more he had to walk, and then what excite- 
ment there would be at the sight of such a creature. 
But, by this time, the turtle had recovered presence of 
mind enough to look round him, and accordingly 
poked his head out, and in doing so came invitingly 
close to his captor's ear, on which his two jaws closed 
in a moment. If ever a prisoner had his revenge he 
had it. The Scotchman might have pulled his ear off, 
in trying to get free, but nothing short of that seemed 
of any use. He could not let go the leg, for that would 
leave the whole weight of the turtle hanging from his 
ear, and he could not keep his arms up without getting 
cramps in them. But he had to try. In misery, with 
his wretched ear bent down close to the shell, and his 
bands immovably raised to the same shoulder the 
whole way, he had to plod on, the whole distance, to 
his house, where his appearance caused no small alarm 
as he came near. Nothing* could even then be done 
to loosen the creature's hold ; it was like a vice — until 



284 Tortoises. 

at last they managed to relieve him, by getting the head 
far enough out to cut it off, after which the jaws were at 
last parted, and the sufferer allowed to tell his luckless 
adventure. 

One of our neighbours used to shock our notions of 
propriety by eating the i turtles ' he caught. 6 There 
are fish, there are flesh, and there are fowl on a turtle/ 
he used to say in his bad English, in describing their 
charms, but the worthy Manksman got no one to join 
him in his appreciation of them. The Indians have a 
kind of religious veneration for them, and would not, 
on any account, do them any harm. I knew one who 
acted as interpreter at a missionary station, who used 
to say that the hardest trial he had had, after he 
became a Christian, was one day in summer, when, 
having pounced upon a tortoise, he took it on his back 
to carry it home, and was overtaken by a dreadful 
storm of thunder and lightning. He said that he 
could hardly get over the thought, that it was because 
he had offended the sacred creature, and this notion 
fairly made him perspire with terror ; but he had the 
courage to resist his alarm, and after the sky had 
cleared, he lifted it once more on his shoulder, and 
went home resolved never to yield to fear of such a 
kind again. 

The hay in the neighbourhood was mown about the 
end of June, and as our own supply was, as yet, far 
short of our requirements, we had to buy a quantity. 
To get it cheaper, we undertook to send our waggon to 



The Hay Season. 285 

the field for it, and bring it home ourselves. Henry 
and I were detailed for this service, and started one 
morning with the oxen and the waggon, a frame of 
light poles having been laid on the ordinary box to 
enable us to pile up a sufficient load. I had to get 
inside, while Henry forked up the hay from the cocks 
on the ground, my part being to spread it about 
evenly. We got on famously till the load was well up 
in the frame, the oxen moving on from one cock to 
another, through the stumps, at Henry's commands, 
but without any special guidance. All at once, while 
they were going at the rate of about two miles an hour, 
the wheels on one side gradually rose, and before I 
could help myself, over went the whole frame, hay and 
all, on the top of Henry, who was walking at the side. 
The oxen had pulled the load over a hillock at the 
foot of a stump. I was sent clear of the avalanche, 
but Henry was thrown on his back, luckily with his 
head and shoulders free, but the rest of his body em- 
bedded in the mass. Neither of us was hurt, how- 
ever, and we laughed heartily enough, after we had 
recovered our self-possession, the first act being to 
stop the oxen, who were marching off with the four 
wheels, as solemnly as ever, and had no idea of 
coming to a halt without orders. Of course we had 
to clear the frame, get it set up again on the waggon, 
and fork up all the hay once more, but we took care 
of the oxen the second time, and met with no more 
accidents. 



286 Henry and I nearly Drowned. 

Henry and I were very nearly drowned, shortly 
after this, in that great lumbering canoe of ours, by a 
very ridiculous act on our own parts, and an unfore- 
seen roughening of the water. Some bricks were 
needed to rebuild the chimney, and they could not 
be had nearer than the opposite side of the river. 
Henry and I, therefore, set off in the forenoon to get 
them, and crossed easily enough. We went straight 
over, intending to paddle down the shore till we 
reached the place where the bricks were to be had, 
about two miles below. Having nothing to hurry 
us, and the day being uncommonly bright and beau- 
tiful, Ve made no attempt to be quick, but drew 
the canoe' to the land, and sallied up the bank to 
get some ears of Indian corn which were growing- 
close by, and offered great attractions to our hungry 
stomachs. At last, after loitering by the way for an 
hour or two, we reached our destination, bought the 
bricks, and paddled our canoe some distance up a 
stream to get near them, that we might the more easily 
get them on board ; but ignorance is a bad teacher, 
even in so simple a matter as loading a canoe with 
bricks. We had no thought but how to pack them 
all in at once, so that we should not have to come 
over again, and kept stowing them in all the way 
along the canoe, except at each end, where we re- 
served a small space for ourselves. When the whole 
had been shipped, we took our places — Henry at the 
bows, on his knees ; I at the stern, on a seat made of 



Henry and I nearly Drowned. 287 

a bit of the lid of a flour-barrel — each of us with his 
paddle. It was delightful to steer down the glassy- 
creek, and when we turned into the river, and skirted 
up close to the banks, it seemed as if we were to get 
back as easily as we came, though Henry just then 
bade me look over the side, telling me that the canoe 
was only the length of a forefinger out of the water, 
and, sure enough, I found it was so; but we never 
thought it boded any danger. In smooth water one is 
not apt to think of the rough that may follow. We 
got along charmingly for a time, under the lee of the 
land, which made a bend out, some distance above 
our house, on the American side ; we determined to 
allow a good deal for the current, and go to this 
point, before we turned to cross. Unfortunately for 
us, in our ignorance of the proper management of a 
canoe under difficulties, a great steamer, passing on to 
Chicago, swept up the stream, close to us, just as we 
were about to strike out for home, and the swell it 
raised made the water run along the edge of the canoe, 
as if it were looking over and wanted to get in. It 
lurched and twisted, got its head wrong, and all but 
filled, even with this slight agitation. We had got 
over this trouble when we found, to our alarm, on 
getting out from the shelter of the land, that the wind 
was getting up, freshly enough to make the mid-stream 
quite rough. If we had known the extent of our 
danger we would have turned back and unloaded some 
of our cargo, but no such notion occurred to us. We 



288 Henry and I nearly Drowned. 

therefore determined to make the best of our way 
across \ but it was easier determined than done. The 
wind and the short chopping waves together very soon 
took the management of our frail bark out of our 
hands, twisting the canoe round and round, in spite 
of all our efforts. Eveiy little while we would . get 
into the trough of the stream, and the water would 
run along from the bow to the stern, shining over the 
few inches on which depended our hope and life \ 
then, some would find its way in. The bricks got 
quite wet. The empty space in which I sat was filled 
to my ankles with water, and Henry shouted that it 
was the same at his end. ' Paddle hard, George, for 
your life — paddle, paddle, and we may get over/ and 
paddle both of us did, at the very top of our strength. 
We must have been making way swiftly, but owing to 
the noise of the wind, and the confusion of mind we 
w T ere in, for neither of us could swim a stroke, we 
could not find out whether we made any progress, 
and, to add to our bewilderment, round went the head 
of the canoe the wrong way once and again, in spite 
of us. 'Shall I throw out the bricks, Henry?' I 
cried. ' Yes, if you can \ ' but it was next to impos- 
sible to do it. I did, indeed, manage to toss two or 
three over, but I was helmsman, and my giving up my 
paddle left us helplessly whirling round. Henry had 
his back to the bricks, and of course could do no- 
thing. He, therefore, kept paddling as hard as ever. 
Seizing my paddle, I joined my efforts to his. and, 



Henry falls III. 289 

after a time, found, to my great joy, that the water 
was changing colour — a sure sign that we were much 
nearer land than we had been a little while before. A 
few minutes more, and we saw the bottom, and knew 
we were safe ; but not so the bricks. The canoe sank 
before reaching the bank, immersing us to the middle, 
and though we dragged it to the land, the bricks were 
in so bad a state that, from our neglecting to take 
special pains with them, a great many mouldered into 
red earth. 

This was my only dangerous adventure with our 
large coffin of a canoe, but many a hard pull I have 
had with it. Poor Henry gave me one tough day's 
work, much against his will. He had been working 
in the field, and, being very warm, had drunk a large 
quantity of water, which brought on very painful 
cramps of the stomach. There were none but our 
two selves and the girls at home, and the nearest 
place to procure medical advice was at the village 
where I had got the bricks, across the river. There 
was no time to be lost : Henry was alarmingly ill, so 
away I went with the canoe, paddling as hard as I 
could, and got to my destination pretty quickly. But 
to get the ' doctor ' was the difficulty. I found l Major ' 
Thompson, whom I knew by sight, standing in his 
shirt-sleeves at the door of the coffee-house he kept, 
and I asked him if he could tell me where I should 
find the medical man. 6 Good morning, doctor/ said 
the i Major/ in answer — I was no more a doctor than 
19 



290 American Titles. 

he a major, but the Americans are fond of assuming 
and bestowing titles — 'I don't know, p'raps he's to 
home — jist ask Gin'ral Northrop, yonder, if he's seen 
him come out this morning?' The gentleman to 
whom I was thus directed proved to be the leader of 
the choir in the village chapel, and followed some 
trade, but what, I don't know. He was dressed in a 
great broad straw hat, blue shirt, linen trowsers, and 
boots, and was very busy loading a cart with furniture 
at a door up the street. He was very courteous when 
I got up to him. ' I guess,' said he, i you'll be all 
right; I calculate he's not about yet; just go down 
the street, and turn round that there fence corner, and 
you'll easy find his place/ Thither I went, and was 
fortunate enough to find the old man, who, in spite of 
a dissipated and miserable look, seemed to know his 
profession. I could only suppose that he must have 
been driven to such a place from pure necessity. He 
gave me some stuff from a dispensary, as strange and 
uncouth as that of the apothecary in ' Romeo and 
Juliet:'— ' 

* About his shelves 
A beggarly account of empty boxes, 
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, 
Remnants of packthread * * * 
Were thinly scattered.' 

Into this sanctum I was taken by the back-door, 
and found it, in reality, more a lumber-room than a 
shop, for the window made no sort of display, and, 



Backwood Doctors. 291 

everywhere, dirt reigned in undisturbed possession. 
Having got the medicine, I quickly regained the 
canoe, and paddled home as rapidly as possible. 
But, instead of getting better, poor Henry seemed 
rather to get worse, so that I had to set off a second 
time, with a long account of the symptoms, on paper, 
to hand to the doctor. This time, thank God, he hit 
on the right prescription, and I had the unspeakable 
pleasure of seeing the poor sufferer greatly relieved by 
an infusion we got made for him when I returned. 
I verily believe that if he had had no one to go over 
the river for him he must have died. 

The want of sufficient medical help, and too often 
the inferior quality of what you can get, is one of the 
greatest evils of living in the backwoods. Henry all 
but died a year or two after this, from the treatment 
he had to undergo at the hands of a self-styled doctor, 
who came to the neighbourhood for a time, and left it 
when his incompetency was found out. The illness 
was a very serious one — brain fever — and the treat- 
ment resorted to was bleeding and depletion, till life 
nearly ebbed away from sheer exhaustion. The poor 
fellow was made to take medicine enough almost to 
kill a strong man ; and was so evidently sinking, that 
the other inmates of the house determined to send 
over for old Dr Chamberlain, who had before saved 
him, when I went to him. ' Killed with too much 
medicine/ was all he said, when he had seen the 
wasted form of the patient, and heard the story ; ' if 



292 Backwood Doctors. 

he should get through it, it will be in spite of what has 
been done, not by its means/ He did get through, 
but it was a long, weary struggle. I have known a 
person come twenty miles in search of a medical man 
for his wife, and when he reached his house, be bit- 
terly disappointed to find the doctor off ten miles in 
an opposite direction. Mr Spring, up the river, had 
good cause to remember his being at the mercy of an 
uneducated practitioner. He was going in the dark, 
one winter night, to a friend's house, about two miles 
off, when suddenly slipping on a piece of ice, he fell 
violently on his knee. Trying. to rise, he found he 
had injured the cap, so that he could not walk. He 
had, therefore, to crawl back home again in the keen 
cold of a Canadian night, along the road, over the 
field, and down the steep bank, all covered thickly 
with snow. The i doctor,' who lived five miles off, 
was, of course, sent for next morning as early as pos- 
sible. But it would, perhaps, have been better if he 
had never been sent for at all, for he bandaged the 
leg so tightly as almost to bring on mortification ; and 
this he did, too, without attempting to bring the 
broken parts together. The result was a hopelessly 
stiff leg, after the sufferer had endured many weeks of 
pain. 

We had occasional visits of gentlemen, who joined 
the medical profession with other pursuits. They 
would cure a fever, or act as dentists, and announced 
their arrival by calls from house to house. A friend 



Backwood Doctors. 293 

of mine, who had unfortunately lost a front tooth, 
thought he had better take advantage of such an op- 
portunity, especially as he was going in a short time 
up Lake Huron to a public dinner. ' But,' said 
he, when relating the circumstance, ' the fellow T was a 
humbug; he put in a hickory peg to hold the new 
tooth, and when I was in the middle of my dinner it 
turned straight out, and stuck before me, like a tusk, 
till I got it tugged out 1 

There was a medical man of a very different stamp 
who came among us some years after this, when I had 
left the river, and of whom I have heard some curious 
stories. Dr White — let that be his name — had been 
in large practice in Ireland, but had unfortunately 
fallen into dissipated habits, which compelled him to 
emigrate. To raise the means of reaching Canada, 
his wife had sold an annuity she enjoyed on her 
own life, after his engaging that he would give up his 
intemperate habits. He first settled in one of the 
towns, but afterwards came to our part, and bought a 
farm, intending to help his income by working it. 
His old habit, however, to the regret of all, broke out 
again, and destroyed his prospects, in spite of his 
being looked up to throughout the district, as the best 
4 doctor - in it. People often came from a distance to 
consult . him, and were doomed to find him helpless ; 
and this, of course, speedily ruined his practice. 
Instances of his skill, however, still linger in the minds 
of many in the settlement, accompanied with great 



294 Backwood Doctors. 

regret, that a man at once so clever and comely 
should have been so great an enemy to himself. He 
■ had a rough humour sometimes, when he was a little 
under the influence of drink, which was very diverting. 
Henry was one night at his house in the winter, when 
a rap came to the door. The others being busy, Henry 
rose to open it, and found two men, who had come 
through the frightful cold to get the doctor's assistance. 
The one, it appeared, could not speak, from some 
abscess or boil in his throat, which he had come to get 
lanced or otherwise treated. On being taken into the 
hall, which had a stove in it, and was comfortable 
enough, the doctor made his appearance, and walked 
up to the sufferer with a candle in his hand. ' What's 
the matter with you ? p The patient simply opened 
his mouth wide, and pointed into it with his fingers. 
' Let me see/ said White. ' Open your mouth, sir ' — 
taking the candle out of the candlestick, and holding 
it close to the poor fellow's face. The mouth was, of 
course, instantly opened as widely as possible, and the 
blazing candle was as instantly sent dash into it, as far 
as it would go, raising a yell from the patient that 
might have been heard over the next farm, which was 
followed by a rush outside the door to clear his mouth, 
as he seemed half choked. ' Bring a light here/ cried 
White, coming to the door quite coolly. i How do 
you feel, sir ? ' The blow with the soft candle, the 
fright, and the yell, all together, had wrought a miracle 
on the poor fellow. His trouble was clean gone. 



Backwood Doctors. 295 

' I'm better, sir — what's to pay?' ' Nothing at all/ 
replied White ; ' good night to you/ and the scene 
was over. Henry laughed, as he well might, at such 
an incident ; and after a while ventured to ask the 
doctor if there were no instruments that would have 
done ? l Certainly there are, but do you think I'd 
dirty my instruments on a fellow like that ? the candle 
would do well enough.' Poor White died some time 
after, through intemperance. His widow and family 
were enabled to get back to Ireland by the sale of all 
the effects he had; and on their arrival, his friends 
took charge of the children, and the widow went out 
as a governess to India. 



296 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

American men and women — Fireflies — Profusion of insect life — 
Grasshoppers — Frederick and David leave Canada — Soap- 
making — Home-made candles — Recipe for washing quickly — 
Writing letters — The parson for driver. 

|S the delicious nights of summer drew on 
again, it was a pleasure of which we never 
wearied to ride over to some neighbour's 
to spend an hour or two. The visit itself 
was always delightful, for we could not have wished 
better society, but the unspeakable loveliness of the 
road was no less so. We very soon got a couple of 
horses, every one else having them, for no one in 
Canada ever thinks of walking if he can help it. I have 
often wondered at this, for the same persons who 
would not stir a step, if possible, in Canada, without 
a horse, or some conveyance, would have been fond 
of walking if they had remained in Britain. It can- 
not be because they have horses in the one country 
and had none in the other, for, in towns, there is no 
such liking for walking, though there are few who 
either own or can borrow a horse or vehicle, and 
those in the country who have neither will send in all 



American Men and Women. 297 

directions to ask the loan of a neighbour's horse 
rather than walk a few miles. Probably the great 
heat of summer renders the exertion of walking irk- 
some to most people ; and, on the other hand, in 
winter, the cold and the snow are such hindrances as 
to throw them out of the habit of it. There seems 
no doubt besides, that the effect of the climate on 
Europeans is to enfeeble them gradually, though they 
may not exhibit any symptoms of rapid decay, or suffer 
from any acute disease. The red cheeks of the inhabit- 
ants of Britain are very soon lost in Canada, and you 
very seldom see the stout, hearty people so common 
in England. The native Canadian of the Western Pro- 
vince is a very poor specimen of a man, unless he be 
the child of foreign parents. A few generations takes 
all the roundness from his figure, and brings him very 
much to the type of the Indian, as in the case of the 
New Englanders, who, though originally English, are 
now little better in appearance than White Indians. 
Indeed, the Indians themselves show the effects of 
the climate as much as Europeans, for what can be 
more opposite than the squat, fat figure of a Tartar, 
and the thin, tall outline of his descendant, when 
changed into one of the red tribes of North America. 
I used to be amused watching the steamers which 
came to the wharves on the river to get wood, crowded 
with emigrants from the New England States to the 
Far West. The men, if at all beyond youth, were 
fleshless, long-necked, calfless, cadaverous-looking 



298 American Men andWomen. 

creatures ; the women, in their coal-scuttle sun-bon- 
nets, with a long green veil hanging down their backs, 
and straight dresses tied loosely round the waist, 
looked, for the most part, very strange apparitions to 
one accustomed to the women of England. The girls 
of America are often very pretty, but they soon lose 
their plumpness, and grow old. Mr Brown, up the 
river, one day amused me by telling how he had heard 
a servant-woman who was in fierce dispute with a com- 
rade, declare that she was no better than three broom- 
sticks tied together. She was pretty nearly right as to 
the appearance of not a few — the three broomsticks, 
dressed up, would look almost as stout. It is the 
same with animals as with human beings. A horse or 
a bull, brought from Britain, loses its spirit in Canada. 
Little or no trouble is needed to break in a colt, for if 
he be put in a waggon he will very soon pull as steadi- 
ly as any other. A Canadian bull is a very quiet and 
inoffensive creature. Everything, in fact, seems alike 
to degenerate in form and spirit from its native English 
characteristics. 

But I am forgetting my rides on the old mare, 
Kate, in the summer evenings. I was walking her 
slowly up the road one night, when I was struck by 
innumerable flashes of light among the trees in the 
forest at my side. I tried every theory I could think 
of to account for it, some of them ridiculous enough, 
but it was not till I came home that I hit on the 
right one, which I might have been sure of at first. 



Fireflies. 299 

The phenomenon in question was nothing but an 
immense number of fireflies sporting among the 
branches, and their motion made them seem as if 
every leaf were a Leyden jar giving off a succession 
of electric sparks. I had often seen them before, but 
never in such amazing swarms. They must have 
been holding some grand carnival, some firefly's ball, 
with endless dancing and wonderful illumination. 
The insects that make this brilliant display are a kind 
of beetle, about three-quarters of an inch in length. 
They give out their light from different parts of 
their bodies, but chiefly from the lower half, and 
are often caught and kept for a time in bottles as 
a curiosity. In other countries they are said to have 
been put to various uses, but I never heard of their 
being so employed in Canada. The Caribs of St 
Domingo, a race of Indians whose memory is now 
passing away, were formerly accustomed to use them 
as living lamps in their evening household occupa- 
tions, just as we use candles. In travelling at night 
they fastened them to their feet, and in fishing or 
hunting in the dark they made them serve as lights 
to guide them. Moreover, as the fireflies destroy 
ants, they gave them the freest entry to their 
wigwams to help to rid them of these pests. 
Southey, in his poem of 'Madoc/ tells us that 
it was by the light of this insect Coatel rescued 
the British hero from the hands of the Mexican 
priests : 



300 Profusion of Insect Life. 

* She beckoned and descended, and drew out 
From underneath her vest a cage, or net 
It rather might be called, so fine the twigs 
That knit it — where, confined, two fireflies gave 
Their lustre. By that light did Madoc first 
Behold the features of his lovely guide.' 



I am afraid he would have remained ignorant of 
her loveliness, if the discovery had depended on the 
light of Canadian fireflies, which are very beautiful, 
indeed, in their momentary brightness, but are far too 
dim for anything more. I have often been reminded, 
as I have seen one, here and there, kindling his little 
spark for an instant, and sailing in light, for a brief 
glimpse, across the night, of the fine figure in which 
Coleridge compares the illumination afforded by phi- 
losophy, in the ages before Christ, to the radiance 
with which ' the lanthorn-fly of the tropics ' lights up 
for a moment the natural darkness. It is equally 
beautiful and apt 

It is wonderful to see what a profusion of insect 
life sometimes shows itself in the summer-time in 
Canada. I was once sailing down the Niagara River 
to Chippewa, which is the last port above the Falls, in 
the month of September, when, all at once, the 
steamer entered a dense snowy cloud of white gnats, 
so blinding, from the countless numbers, that all on 
deck had either to get below, or turn their backs, or. 
stand behind some protection. You could see the 
land through them only as you would have seen it 



Profusion of Insect Life. 301 

through a snow-storm, and this continued till we 
reached our destination — a distance of several miles. 
How many millions of millions of these frail creatures 
must there have been ? There is another fly that I 
have also seen in vast numbers — the May-fly, which, 
however, makes its appearance not in May generally, 
but in June. But it is so disagreeable-looking, that 
my only desire on beholding it has been to get out of 
its way. Butterflies are sometimes met with in similar 
clouds. I have seen large numbers of them in the 
air, or resting on the earth ; but Sir James Emerson 
Tennent tells us that, in Ceylon, they sometimes fly 
past in flocks apparently miles in breadth, and in an 
unbroken stream, for hours and even days together.* 
What a vast amount of life there must be over the 
world, at any one time, when such an amazing fulness 
of it is met at even a single point ! -Canada has, 
indeed, too much cause to feel this, as regards the 
insect tribes, for, of late years, it has been visited by 
such successions of pests as often to injure its har- 
vests to a great extent. The ' army-worm,' as it is 
called, the weevil, the wireworm, the midge, and the 
locust, or, as the Canadians call it, the grasshopper, 
have each invaded districts, which, on their appear- 
ance, were rich with the promise of abundant crops, 
but were left waste and ruined when they had passed 
over it. The grasshopper is the most easily noticed 
of these plagues, as its size and its curious noise in fly- 
* Sir J. E. Tennent's 'Ceylon,' i. 247. 



302 Grasshoppers. 

ing, and the way it strikes against your clothes, and in- 
stantly fastens on them, are sure to draw attention. 
They seem to be a new arrival in Canada, having 
apparently travelled thither gradually from the vast 
prairies of the Far West. At the Red River they are 
met with in legions that enable one to realize what a 
curse the locusts must have been to the Egyptians of 
old. As soon as the dew is off the grass in the morn- 
ings they take short flights, as if to prepare for the 
day's work, and about nine o'clock rise in cloud after 
cloud and fly off. About noon the numbers seem 
greatest. The light is then palpably obscured — there 
is an unearthly ashen light over everything — the air 
is filled as if with flakes of snow, sometimes to nearly 
a thousand feet in height, and changes from blue to 
silver-grey, or to ash or lead colour, as the clouds 
grow deeper or diminish, a quivering motion filling it, 
as the light strikes on the myriads of moving wings. 
A sound, indescribable, but overpowering, from the 
thought of its source, comes down from the vast hosts, 
filling the mind with a sense of awe and amazement. 
Such flights have hitherto been seen and heard only 
outside the settled parts of Canada, but in every part 
of it there are multitudes. I have seen them in 
countless thousands in the fields and on the roads, 
and have often caught them to look at the wonderful 
beauty of their limbs, which are finished far more 
elaborately than the finest ornament, and are suited 



Frederick and David leave Canada. 303 

to the habits and wants of the creature in the most 
admirable manner. 

The summer of the second year saw a diminution 
of our family circle by the departure of Frederick 
and David to the United States to push their fortunes 
there. They did not like farming, and were attracted 
by the population and wealth of the States, as com- 
pared with Canada. It was a sad time with us who 
remained, when they left us. In those days a great 
many young men left the province, from the difficulty 
of finding suitable employment in it. Where nearly 
all were farmers, and money was very scarce, and the 
towns mere villages, there was, of course, very little 
to do, and it was not to be wondered at that young 
men did not relish the thought of spending their lives 
as day-labourers on a piece of ground, with no better 
remuneration for hard work than the food they ate and 
the rough clothing they wore. Anything more was not, 
in those days, to be hoped for. Since then, indeed, 
there has been a great change. The first race of 
settlers have made their farms valuable by many years' 
hard work and careful culture, and fine brick houses 
have taken the place of the shanties and log-houses 
which served at first. Some years of high prices 
made them all think their fortunes sure at once, and 
every one got his gig and his piano, and the girls went 
to boarding-schools, and the young men idled and 
flaunted round in fine clothes. If fewer leave Canada 



304 Hard Struggles. 

for the States now, it is not because they are any- 
fonder than ever of hard work. Even where their 
fathers' farms would pay for hiring men to work them, 
they like to be gentlemen, and flock in crowds to 
turn doctors or lawyers in as easy a way as possible. 
It is wonderful how many there are of both these 
professions, and how many more hurry on to enter 
them. But there were no such openings in the early 
days of our settlement, and my brothers must either 
have plodded on driving oxen and hoeing, ploughing, 
harrowing, and the like, or have left for the great 
country across the river. They did not find life very 
sunny, however, even in the States, and both had hard 
struggles at first to get on. Poor Frederick, indeed, 
never got very far up in the world, a fever cutting him 
off some years* after, when he was on a journey in the 
South. He died without a creature he knew near him, 
and indeed we did not know that he was gone till 
nearly a year after. David gradually made his way, 
and has long been comfortably settled in a rising town 
in one of the Western States ; but his advancement 
rose from his having had the good fortune to buy some 
land where a town grew up shortly after, which en- 
abled him to make a good deal of money. Our 
household, when they had left us, was very quiet com- 
pared with the past — only Robert, Henry, and I re- 
maining, with my two sisters as the mistresses of the 
mansion. 

What a curious Robinson-Crusoe life we led in 



Soap-making. 305 

many ways in those first years. A barrel raised on 
a stand, the bottom full of holes, and covered with a 
layer of straw, and a number of channels gouged out 
in the board on which it rested, formed the primitive 
machine for our soap-making. All the ashes from 
the fires were thrown into the barrel, and, when it 
was full, a quantity of water poured into it made the 
alkaline ley that was needed, a pail at the edge of 
the board below catching it as it drained off. In 
summer-time it was enough merely to throw this ley 
into another barrel, put in the fat left from our 
daily table, and stir the mixture together now and 
then, and the sun made soap of it, without any 
further trouble on our part. In colder weather it 
had to be put on the fire until the desired trans- 
mutation had been effected. The ley looked so very 
like strong tea that I was often afraid of some 
accident, where any of it had been left in a cup 
or bowl. To drink it would have been certain 
and awful death, as we did not then know how 
to neutralize the effect if we had taken it. Noah 
Nash, a young lad in the neighbourhood, was all but 
fatally poisoned by it one day ; indeed, nothing saved 
him but his presence of mind, and the fact that he 
had an acid in the house. Chancing to come in 
very much heated, and seeing a cupful of nice 
strong-looking tea in the window, he swallowed 
n-early the whole of it before he had time to think 

that, instead of tea, it was the terrible alkali that 
20 



306 Home-made Candles. 

had been drawn from the ashes. The serious con- 
sequences of his mistake flashed on him in an instant 
Snatching a tumbler, he rushed to the cellar, where, 
providentially, there happened to be a barrel of vine- 
gar, and in a moment filled the glass, and drank down 
successive draughts of it, and was thus saved, the 
acid effectually neutralizing the alkali in the stomach ; 
but, quick as he had been, his mouth and throat were 
burned to such a degree by the potash, that the skin 
of the mouth peeled away, day after day, in strips, 
and he had to be fed on the simplest preparations 
long afterwards. Our candles were a branch of home 
manufacture in which we rather excelled after a time, 
though, to tell the truth, the quantity used was not 
very great. We had bought candle-moulds of tin, 
and put aside any fat suitable for candles, till we had 
enough to make what would fill them ; and then, what 
threading the wicks into the moulds at one end, and 
tying them over little pieces of wood at the other — 
what proud encomiums over one that kept fair in the 
middle — what a laugh at another which had in some 
eccentric way run down one side of the tallow, leaving 
the whole round of the candle undisturbed by any 
intrusion of the cotton. But we would not have 
made the fortune of any tallow-chandler had we had 
to buy all we burned, for we only lighted one at tea, 
or for a minute or two on going to bed, or to enable 
some one to read, when a craving for literary food set 
in. Lumps of pine, full of resin, were our more cus- 



Rude Accommodation. 307 

tomary style of illumination, its flaming brightness, 
leaping and flaring though it was, sufficing for our 
ordinary requirements. We used to sit for hours 
round the fire, talking and dozing; to read was a 
huge effort, after hard work all day, and it was too 
cold, while the fire was kept up, to sit at any distance 
from it. In some houses I have known candles kept 
as sacredly for doing honour to a stranger as if they 
had been made of silver. A rag in some grease, in a 
saucer, usually served for a lamp, and an inch or two 
of candle was only brought out when a guest was 
about to retire. Many a time I have known even 
visitors, in the rough bush, sent to bed in the dark. 
We were, however, in some things, wonderfully before 
the people settled back from the river. Most of them 
were content to put up with the very rudest accommo- 
dation and conveniences ; one room containing several 
beds, often holding not only a whole household, but 
any passing stranger. How to get out and in, unseen, 
was the great difficulty. I have often been in trouble 
about it myself, but it must surely have been worse for 
the young women of the family. As to any basin or 
ewer in the room, they were Capuan luxuries in the 
wild bush. Til thank you for a basin, Mrs Smith/ 
said I, one morning, anxious to make myself comfort- 
able for the day, after having enjoyed her husband's 
hospitality over-night. It was gloriously bright out- 
side, though the sun had not yet shown himself over 
the trees. ' Come this way, Mr Stanley ; I'll give it 



308 Writing Letters. 

you here/ said Mrs Smith. Out she went, and lifted 
a small round tin pie-dish, that would hardly hold 
a quart, poured some water into it from the pail at 
the door, which held the breakfast water as well, 
and set it on the top of a stump, close at hand, 
with the injunction to 6 make haste, for there was a 
hole* in the bottom, and if I didn't be quick the 
water would all be gone/ Luckily, I was all ready ; 
but there was no offer of soap, and so I had to make 
my hands fly hither and thither at a great rate, and 
finish as best I could by a hard rubbing with a canvas 
towel. 

To write a letter in those days was by no means 
a light task. Ink was a rare commodity, and stood a 
great deal of water before it was done. When we had 
none, a piece of Indian-ink served pretty well ; and 
when that was lost, we used to mix gunpowder and 
vinegar together, and make a kind of faintly-visible 
pigment out of the two. The only paper we could get 
was dreadful. How cruelly the pen used to dab 
through it ! How invincibly shabby a letter looked 
on it ! The post-office was in a store kept by a French 
Canadian, and was limited enough in its arrangements. 
I remember taking a letter one day a little later than 
was right, as it appeared. ' The mail's made up, Mr 
Stanley/ said the post-master, ' and it's against the law 
to open it when it's once sealed ; but I suppose I may 
as well oblige a friend.' So saying, he took down a 
piece of brown paper from the shelf behind him, cut 



New Occupations. 309 

round some seals which were on the back of it, and ex- 
posed the 'mail/ w r hich, forsooth, I found consisted 
of a single letter ! Mine was presently laid peacefully 
at the side of this earlier sharer of postal honour, and 
I hope did not make the bundle too heavy for the 
mail-boy J s saddle-bags. 

It used to amuse us to see how readily every one 
round us took to new occupations, if anything hindered 
his continuing the one in which he had previously 
been engaged. You would hear of a tailor turning 
freshwater sailor, and buying a flat-bottomed scow, to 
take* goods from one part of the river to another \ one 
shoemaker turned miller, and another took to making 
and selling 'lumber/ A young lad, the son of a 
minister, who wished to get a good education, first 
hired himself out to chop cord-wood, and when he had 
made enough to buy books, and keep a reserve on 
hand, he engaged with a minister over the river, who 
had an ' academy/ to give him tuition, in return for 
having his horse cleaned, and the house-wood split. 
Working thus, he gained Latin and Greek enough to 
go to college 3 but had to return to his axe, and work 
for another winter, to get money to pay the expenses 
of the first session. This obtained, off he set, and 
ended by taking the degree of M.A. at Yale College, 
Connecticut. In the mean time, however, a change 
had passed over his mind as to becoming a clergy- 
man \ and instead of seeking a church, he went into 
partnership with his brother in the patent medicine 



3 io The Parson for Driver. 

trade, in which calling, I suppose, he is now engaged 
in one of the United States' cities. 

I was once travelling on a winter night, in a public 
Stage, on the edge of Lake Ontario. The vehicle was 
a high waggon, with a linen cover stretched over a 
round framework, like a gipsy tent. I was the only 
passenger, and had taken my place in the body of the 
machine. This did not suit the driver, however, who 
seemed to feel lonely ; and, after a time, turning round 
to me, he said — ' I guess we'd be better together this 
cold night. Come this way — won't you ? ' Of course, 
I instantly complied ; and then received, among much 
various information on matters interesting to coach- 
drivers, a narrative of his own life, a portion of which I 
still remember : — 

' I'm a reg'lar preacher, you see/ said he. % I was 
on the circuit round Framley for one turn, and they 
promised pretty fair, but I didn't get enough to keep 
house on. Then I got changed to Dover circuit, and 
that was worse. Says I to my wife — " Wife/' says I, 
" preachin* wont keep our pot bilin', anyhow — I must 
scare up somethin' else, somehow." So I heard that 
there was a new stage to be put on at Brownsville ; 
and I went to Squire Brown, and told him that, if he 
liked, I'd drive it ; and so, here I am — for, you see, the 
mail stage has to go even if a parson should have to 
drive it ; ' and he ended with a broad grin and a long 
laugh — ha — ha — ha ! 



3 11 




CHAPTER XIX. 

Americanisms — Our poultry — The wasps — Their nests — l Bob's ' 
skill in killing them — Racoons — A hunt — Racoon cake — The 
town of Busaco — Summer * sailing ' — Boy drowned — French 
settlers. 

|E were struck, as every new comer is, by 
the new meanings put by Canadians on 
words, the new connexions in which they 
used them, and the extraordinary way in 
which some were pronounced. Of course, we heard 
people ' guessing ' at every turn, and whatever any one 
intended doing, he spoke of as ' fixing/ You would 
hear a man say, that his waggon, or his chimney, or 
his gun, must be ' fixed/ a girl would be ready to 
take a walk with you, as soon as she had ' fixed herself;' 
and the baby was always ' fixed ' in the morning, when 
washed and dressed for the day. ' Catherine/ said a 
husband one day to his wife, in my hearing, pronounc- 
ing the last syllable of her name so as to rhyme with 
line, ' I calculate that them apples 'ill want regulatinV 
referring to some that were drying in the sun. They 
1 reckon' at every third sentence. A well-informed 
man is said to be ' well posted up ■ in some particular 



312 Americanisms. 

subject. Instead of 'what/ they very commonly say 
'how/ in asking questions. A pony was praised to me 
as being ' as fat as mud.' In place of our exclamations 
of surprise at the communication of any new fact, the 
listener will exclaim, ' I want to know/ Any log, or 
trunk of a tree, or other single piece of timber, is in- 
variably a ' stick/ even if it be long enough for a mast. 
All the stock of a timber-yard is alike ' lumber.' An 
ewer is ' sl pitcher ; ' a tin-pail is ' a kettle \ ' a servant 
is ' a help ; ' an employer is ' a boss ; ' a church pew is 
6 a slip ; ' a platform at a meeting is l a stage ; ' children 
are ' juveniles ; ' and a baby is ' a babe.' In pronouncing 
the words engine, or ride, or point, or any other word 
with vowels prominent in it, if you would imitate a 
Canadian, you would need to open your mouth very 
wide, and make as much of each sound as you can. 
Of course, I speak only of the country folks, native 
born; the town people, and the educated classes, 
generally speak as correctly as the same classes in Eng- 
land. We cannot help noticing, moreover, that all 
these corruptions are trifling compared with those 
which we find in the popular dialects of different parts 
of our own country. You can travel all through Canada 
and understand everything you hear, except a word now 
and then ; but at home, to pass from one shire to an- 
other is often like passing to a different people, so far 
as regards the language. The great amount of travel- 
ling now-a-days compared with the fixed life of our 
forefathers, may serve to account for this. People of 



Oitr Potcllry. 313 

every nation meet in Canada, and all come to speak 
very nearly alike, because they move about so much ; 
but the various races that settled in England or Scot- 
land ages ago kept together closely, and consequently 
each learned to speak in a way of its own. 

Our poultry increased very soon after our com- 
mencing on the river, until it became quite a flock ; 
but we had a good deal of trouble with them. The 
weasels were very destructive to the chickens, and so 
were the hen-hawks and chicken-hawks, which were 
always prowling round. But the hens managed to 
beat off the last of these enemies, and a terrible noise 
they made in doing so. The whole barn-yard popula- 
tion used to give Robert great annoyance, by flying 
over the fence he had put up round a piece of ground 
set apart as a garden ; but he succeeded in terrifying 
them at last, by rushing out with a long whip when- 
ever they made their appearance. The very sight of 
him was enough, after a time, to send them off with 
outstretched wings and necks, and the most amazing 
screeches and cackling ; it was laughable to see their 
consternation and precipitate flight. Our turkeys were 
a nuisance as well as a comfort to us : they were much 
given to wandering, and so stupid withal, that if they 
once got into the woods we rarely saw them again. 
The only plan was to have their wings cut close, and 
to keep them shut up in the barn-yard. In compensa- 
tion for this trouble, however, we took ample revenge 
both on them and the cocks and hens, alike in person 



314 Large Quan titles of Eggs. 

and in the harvest of eggs, which formed a main 
element in most of our dishes. We needed all we 
cculd get. As to eggs, it seemed as if any quantity- 
would have been consumed. There was to be a ' bee ' 
one time, to raise a second barn ; and my sisters were 
in great concern because they could not find out 
where the hens were laying. At last, they saw one go 
down a hole in the barn floor, and instantly concluded 
they had discovered the secret hoard. A plank was 
forthwith lifted, and there, sure enough, were no less 
than twenty dozen of eggs lying in one part or other. 
It was hard work to get them out, but Henry and I 
helped, and we brought them all to the house. In a 
week or ten days there were not two dozen left. The 
men who had attended the 'bee/ and one or two 
whom we kept on at wages, had devoured them all in 
cakes and puddings, or in the ordinary way. But 
what would these bush-fellows not get down? One 
day, we had a labourer with us, and Eliza, to please 
him, set out a large glass dish of preserves, holding, 
certainly, a pound weight at the least. She thought, of 
course, he would take a little to his bread ; but* his 
notions on the subject were very different, for, drawing 
the dish to him, and taking up a tablespoon, he supped 
down the whole in a succession of huge mouthfuls. 
I have known a hired man eat a dozen of eggs at his 
breakfast ! 

The wasps were very numerous round the house 
in summer. A nest of these creatures ensconced 



Wasps. 315 

themselves in a hole between two logs, in the front 
part of it, and, as they never troubled us, we did 
not trouble them. But not so our little terrier, Bob. 
The mouth of the nest was about a yard from the 
ground, and admitted only one at a time. Below 
this, Bob would take his seat for hours together, 
watching each arrival ; sometimes letting them go in 
peaceably, but every now and then jumping up at 
them, with his lips drawn back, and giving a snap 
which seldom failed to kill them. The little fellow 
seemed to have quite a passion for wasp-hunting. 
The dead proofs of his success would often lie thick 
over the ground by evening. How the colony ever 
bore up against his attacks I cannot imagine. One 
day we saw John Robinson, a labourer, whom we had 
engaged, rushing down in hot haste from the top of 
the field flinging his arms about in every direction, 
and making the most extraordinary bobbing and 
fighting, apparently at nothing. But, as he got near, 
he roared out, 'I've tumbled a wasps'-nest, and 
they're after me/ and this was all we could get out of 
him for some time. Indeed they followed him quite 
a distance. He had been lifting a log that was im- 
bedded in the ground, when, behold ! out rushed 
a whole townful, sending him off at once in igno- 
minious flight. I used to think the nests of the 
wasps, which we sometimes found hanging from 
branches in the woods, most wonderful specimens of 
insect manufacture. They were oval in form, with 



3 1 6 Racoons. 

the mouth at the bottom, and looked often not unlike 
a clumsily made boy's top. But of what material 
do you think they were constructed ? Of paper — 
real true paper, of a greyish colour, made by the 
wasps gnawing off very small pieces of decayed wood, 
which they bruise and work up till it changes its cha- 
racter, and becomes as much paper as any we can 
make ourselves. It is wonderful that men should not 
have found out, from such a lesson, the art of making 
this most precious production much sooner than they 
did. 

The racoons, usually called 'coons, were a great 
nuisance when the corn was getting ripe. They 
came out of the woods at night, and did a great deal 
of mischief in a very short time. We used to hunt 
them by torchlight, the torches being strips of hickory 
bark, or lumps of fat pine. We could have done 
nothing, however, without the help of our dogs, who 
tracked them to the trees in which they had taken 
refuge, and then we shot them by the help of the 
lights, amidst prodigious excitement and commotion. 
It was very dangerous to catch hold of one of them if 
it fell wounded. They could twist their heads so far 
round, and their skin was so loose, that you were 
never sure you would not get a bite in whatever way 
you held them. The Weirs, close to us, got skins 
enough one autumn to make fine robes for their sleigh. 
I never knew but one man who had eaten racoon, 
and he was no wiser than he needed to be. He was 

% 



A Racoon Hunt. 3 1 7 

a farm-labourer, who stammered in his speech, and 
lived all alone, and was deplorably ignorant. Meeting 
him one day after a hunt, in which he had got a large 
racoon for his share, he stopped me to speak of it 
thus — c Ggre-e-at rac-c-coon that — there was a p-pint 
of oil in him — it m-made a-a m-most beautiful short- 
cake ! ' I wished him joy of his taste. 

I remember one racoon hunt which formed a sub- 
ject of conversation for long after. Mr Weir's field 
of Indian corn had been sadly injured, and our own 
was not much better, so we resolved on destroying 
some of the marauders if possible. All the young 
fellows for miles up and down the river, gathered in 
the afternoon, to get a long talk beforehand, and to 
make every preparation. Some of us saw to the torches 
— that there were plenty of them, and that they were of 
the right kind of wood ; others looked to the guns, to 
have them properly cleaned, and the ammunition ready. 
1 I say, Ned Thompson/ said one, ' I hope you won't 
be making such a noise as you did last time, frighten- 
ing the very dogs/ But the speaker was only told in 
return, to keep out of the way of everybody else, and 
not run the risk of being taken for a 'coon himself as 
he went creeping along. In due time all work was 
over for the night on our farm, the dogs collected, a 
hearty supper enjoyed, amidst the boasts of some and 
the jokes of others, and off we set The moon was 
very young, but it hung in the clear heavens like a 
silver bow. A short walk brought us to the forest, 



3 1 8 A Racoon Htcnt. 

and Here we spread ourselves, so as to take a larger 
sweep, intending that the two wings should gradually 
draw round and make part of a circle. We could see 
the crescent of the moon, every now and then, through 
the fretted roof of branches, but it would have been 
very dark on the surface of the ground had not the 
torches lent us their brightness. As it was, many 
a stumble checked our steps. It was rough work — 
over logs, into wet spots, round trees, through brush, 
with countless stubs and pieces of wood to keep you 
in mind that you must lift your feet well, like the 
Indians, if you did not wished to be tripped up. The 
light gleaming through the great trees on the wild 
picture of men and dogs, now glaring in the red flame 
of the torches, now hidden by the smoke, was very 
exciting. The dogs had not, as yet, scented anything, 
but they gradually got ahead of us. Presently we 
heard the first baying and barking. We forthwith made 
for the spot, creeping up as silently as possible, while 
the dogs kept the distracted racoon from making its 
escape. How to get a glimpse of it was the trouble. 
* There's nothing there that I can see/ whispered 
Brown to me ; but the dogs showed that they thought 
differently, by the way they tore and scratched at the 
bottom of the tree. What with the leaves, the feeble- 
ness of the moonlight, and our distance from the 
object, every eye was strained, for a time, without see- 
ing a sign of anything living. At last, Henry motioned 
that he saw it, and sure enough there it was, its shape 



The Town of Bitsaco. 3 1 9 

visible far up on a branch. Another moment and the 
sharp crack of his rifle heralded its death and descent 
to the ground. We had good success after this first 
lucky shot, which had been only one of many fired at 
what seemed to be the racoon, but had been only 
a knot in the tree, or, perhaps, a shadow. We did 
not come home till late, when, with dogs almost as 
tired as ourselves, the whole party re-assembled, 
each bearing off his spoils with him if he had won 
any. 

I was walking up the road one afternoon with my 
brother, when we came to an opening on the right 
hand, apparently only leading into pathless woods. 
Stopping me, however, Henry turned and asked, ' If 
I saw yon post stuck up in the little open?' It 
was some time before I could make it out. At last 
I noticed what he alluded to — simply a rough post, 
six feet high, stuck into the ground, in the middle of 
unbroken desolation. ' That's the centre of the 
market-place in the town of Busaco, that is to be/ 
said he. ' All this ground is surveyed for a city, and 
is laid out in building * lots, — not in farms/ I could 
not help laughing. There was not a sign of human 
habitation in sight, and the post must have been there 
for years. When it will be a town it is very hard to 
conjecture. It stands on the outside of a swampy 
belt, which must have deterred any one from settling 
in it, and towns don't go before agricultural improve- 
ment, but follow it, in such a country as Canada, or, 



3^o The Town of Busaco. 

indeed, anywhere, except in a merely manufacturing 
district, or at some point on a busy line of travel. 
Some time after, a poor man effected one great step 
towards its settlement, by a very unintentional improve- 
ment. He had a little money, and thought that if he 
dug a deep, broad ditch, from the swamp to the river, 
he could get enough water to drive a mill, which he 
intended to build close to the bank. But it turned 
out, after the ditch was dug, and his money gone, that 
the water, which he thought came into the swamp from 
springs, was nothing but rain, that had lodged in the 
low places, and had been kept there by the roots of 
trees and the want of drainage. For a time the stream 
was beautiful, but, after a little, the swamp got better, 
and the stream diminished, until, in a few weeks, 
the channel was dry, and the swamp became good 
land. I hope the poor fellow had bought it be- 
fore commencing his ditch. If so, he would make 
money after all, as his improvement raised its value 
immensely. 

A number of the young men of the humbler class 
along the river used to go away each summer ' sailing ' 
— that is, they hired as sailors on the American vessels, 
which traded in whole fleets between the eastern and 
western towns on the great lakes. It was a very good 
thing for them that they could earn money so easily, 
but the employment was not always free from danger. 
One lad, whom I knew very well — William Forth, the 



Summer 'Sailing! 321 



"cb ' 



son of a decent Scotch tailor — was lost in it in the 
autumn of our second year. He had sailed for Lake 
Superior, and did not return at the time expected. 
Then his friends began to be anxious, especially when 
they heard the news of a great storm in the north- 
west. He was never heard of again, and no doubt 
perished with all the crew, his vessel having foundered 
in the gale. Years after, it was reported that a 
schooner, sailing along the upper coast of Lake Huron, 
came upon the wreck of a small ship, down in the 
clear waters, and found means of hooking up enough 
to show that it was the one in which our poor neigh- 
bour's son had been engaged. Curiously and sadly 
enough, a second son of the same parents met a 
miserable death some years after. He was attending 
a threshing-mill, driven by horses, and had for his part 
to thrust in the straw to i feed it ; ' but he, unfortun- 
ately, thrust it in too far, and was himself drawn in, 
and crushed between the innumerable teeth by which 
the grain is pressed out. Before the machine could be 
stopped, poor James was cut almost to pieces. Thuj 
even the peaceful St Clair had its share in the trials 
that follow man under all skies. 

Occasionally, accidents and calamities of this kind 
would happen close to us> and I could not but be 
struck at the depth of feeling to which they gave rise 
amidst a thin population. The tenant on the only let 
farm in the neighbourhood, who lived a mile from us, 



322 A Boy Drowned. 

lost a beautiful boy in a most distressing way. 
There was a wood wharf close to his house, from the 
end of which the lads used to bathe on fine summer 
evenings. A number of them were amusing them- 
selves thus, one afternoon, when Mrs Gilbert, the wife 
of the person of whom I speak, coming out from her 
work, chanced to look at them, and saw one who was 
diving and swimming, as she thought, very strangely. 
A little after, they brought her the news that her boy 
was drowned, and it turned out that it had been his 
struggles at which she had been looking with such 
unconcern. The poor woman took to her bed for 
weeks directly she found it out, and seemed broken- 
hearted ever after. 

The number of French in our neighbourhood, and 
the names of the towns and places on the map, all 
along the western lakes and rivers, often struck me. 
Beginning with Nova Scotia, we trace them the whole 
way — proofs of the sway France once had in North 
America. The bays and headlands, from the Atlantic 
to the Far West, bear French names. For instance, 
Cape Breton, and its capital, Louisburg, and Maine, 
and Vermont, in the States. All Lower Canada was 
French ; then we have Detroit on Lake St Clair ; 
Sault Ste Marie at Lake Superior ; besides a string of 
old French names all down the Mississippi, at the 
mouth of which was the whilom French province of 
Louisiana, on the Gulf of Mexico. This shows signi- 



An Indian Device. 323 

ficantly the great vicissitudes that occur in the story 
of a nation. But our own history has taught us the 
same lesson. All the United States were once British 
provinces. 

I had come out early one morning, in spring, to 
look at the glorious river w T hich lay for miles like a 
mirror before me, when my attention w r as attracted to 
a canoe with a great green bush at one end of it, floating, 
apparently empty, down the current. I soon noticed 
a hand, close at the side, slowly sculling it by a pad- 
dle, and keeping the bush down the stream. As it 
glided past, I watched it narrowly. A great flock of 
wild ducks were splashing and diving at some distance 
below 1 but so slowly and silently did the canoe drift 
on, that they did not seem to heed it. All at once, 
a puff of smoke from the bush, and the sound of a 
gun, with the fall of a number of ducks, killed and 
wounded, on the water, plainly showed what it meant 
An Indian instantly rose up in the canoe, and paddled 
with all haste to the spot, to pick up the game. It 
was a capital plan to cheat the poor birds, and get 
near enough to kill a good number. There were im- 
mense flocks of waterfowl, after the ice broke up, 
each year ; but they were so shy that we were very 
little the better for them. It was very different in 
earlier days, before population increased and incess- 
ant alarm and pursuit had made them wild, for the 
whole province must once have been a great sporting 



324 Coot J s Paradise. 

ground. There is a marsh on Lake Ontario, not far 
from Hamilton, called Coote's Paradise, from the 
delight which an officer of that name found in the 
myriads of ducks, &c, which thronged it thirty or 
forty years ago. 



3*5 




CHAPTER XX. 

Apple-bees — Orchards— Gorgeous display of apple-blossom — 
A meeting in the woods — The ague — Wild parsnips — Man lost 
in the woods. 

jjE had a great deal of fun when our orchard 
got up a little, and when we were able to 
trade with our neighbours for fruit, in 
what they used to call ' apple-paring bees/ 
The young folks of both sexes were invited for a given 
evening in the autumn, and came duly provided with 
apple-parers, which are ingenious contrivances, by 
which an apple, stuck on two prongs at one end, is 
pared by a few turns of a handle at the other. It is 
astonishing to see how quickly it is done. Nor is the 
paring all. The little machine makes a final thrust 
through the heart of the apple, and takes out the core, 
so as to leave nothing to do but to cut what remains in 
pieces. The object of all this paring is to get apples 
enough dried for tarts during winter, the pieces when 
cut being threaded in long strings, and hung up till 
they shrivel and get a leather-like look. When wanted 
for use, a little boiling makes them swell to their 
original size again, and brings back their softness. 



326 Orchards. 

You may imagine how plentiful the fruit must be to 
make such a liberal use of it possible, as that which 
you see all through Canada. You can hardly go into 
any house in the bush, however poor, without having 
a large bowl of c apple sass ' set before you — that is,, 
of apples boiled in maple sugar. The young folks 
make a grand night of it when the ' bee ' comes off. 
The laughing and frolic is unbounded ; some are busy 
with their sweethearts ; some, of a grosser mind, are 
no less busy with the apples, devouring a large pro- 
portion of what they pare; and the whole proceed- 
ings, in many cases, wind up with a dance on the barn- 
floor. 

While speaking of orchards and fiuit, I am re- 
minded of the district along the River Thames, near 
Lake St Clair. To ride through it in June, when the 
apple-blossom was out, was a sight as beautiful as it 
was new to my old country eyes. A great rolling sea 
of white and red flowers rose and fell with the un- 
dulations of the landscape, the green lost in the uni- 
versal blossoming. So exhaustless, indeed, did it seem 
even to the farmers themselves, that you could not enter 
one of their houses without seeing quantities of it 
stuck into jugs and bowls of all sorts, as huge bouquets, 
like ordinary flowers, or as if, instead of the blossom 
of splendid apples, it had been only hawthorn. 
Canadian apples are indeed excellent — that is, the 
good kinds. You see thousands of bushels small and 
miserable enough, but they are used only for pigs, or 



A Meeting in the Woods. 327 

for throwing by the cartload into cider-presses. The 
eating and cooking apples would make any one's 
mouth water to look at them — so large, so round, so 
finely tinted. As to flavour, there can surely be no- 
thing better. Families in towns buy them by the bar- 
rel : in the country, even a ploughman thinks no more , 
of eating them than if they were only transformed pota- 
toes. Sweet cider, in its season, is a very common drink 
in many parts. You meet it at the railway stations, and 
on little stands at the side of the street, and are offered 
it in private houses. Canada is indeed a great country 
for many kinds of fruit. I have already spoken of 
the peaches and grapes : the plums, damsons, melons,, 
pears, and cherries, are equally good, and equally 
plentiful. Poor Hodge, who, in England, lived on a 
few shillings a week, and only heard of the fine things 
in orchards, feasts like a lord, when he emigrates, on 
all their choicest productions. 

They were wonderful people round us for their 
open-air meetings — very zealous and very noisy. I, 
was on a visit at some distance in the summer-time, 
and came on a gathering in the woods. There were 
no ministers present, but some laymen conducted the' 
services. All round, were waggons with the horses 
unyoked, and turned round to feed from the vehicles 
themselves, as mangers. Some of the intending 
hearers sat on the prostrate logs that lay here and 
there, others stood, and some remained in their con- 
veyances. There was no preparation of benches, 



32,8 The Ague. 

or convenience of any kind. It so happened that I 
came only at the close. The proceedings were over, 
and there was nothing going on, for some time, but a 
little conversation among the leaders. In one waggon 
I noticed a whole litter of pigs, and found, on asking 
how they came to be there, that they belonged to a 
good woman who had no one with whom to leave 
them at home, and had brought them- with her, that 
she might attend to their wants, and enjoy the meet- 
ings, at the same time. There were often open-air 
assemblies in the woods. Temperance societies, with 
"bands of music, drew great crowds. Rough boards 
were provided for seats, and a rough platform did for 
the speeches. All the country side, old and young, 
went to them, for most of the people in the country 
districts are rigid teetotallers. There are poor drunk- 
ards enough, after all, but it is a wonder there are no 
more, when whiskey is only a shilling or eighteen- 
pence a gallon. 

The great plague of the river was the ague, which 
seized on a very large number. The poisonous va- 
pours that rise from the undrained soil, in which a 
great depth of vegetable matter lies rotting, must be 
the cause, for when a district gets settled, and opened 
to the sun, so that the surface is dried, it disappears. 
I never had it myself, I am happy to say, but all my 
brothers suffered from its attacks, and poor Eliza 
shivered with it for months together. It is really a 
dreadful disease. It begins with a burning fever, 



Wild Parsnips. 329 

occasioning a thirst which cannot be satisfied by 
drinking any quantity of water, and when this passes 
off, every bone shakes, the teeth rattle, the whole 
frame quivers, with the most agonizing cold. All the 
bedclothes in the house are found to be insufficient to 
keep the sufferer warm. After a day's misery like this, 
the attack ceases, and does not return till the second 
day. Its weakening effects are terrible. If severe, the 
patient can do nothing even in the interval of the 
attacks, and they sometimes continue for seven and 
eight months together. The only real remedy known 
is quinine, and it is taken in quantities that astonish a 
stranger. Of late years there has been far less of the 
disease in the older districts than formerly, and it is to 
be hoped that, some day, it will disappear altogether, 
but meanwhile it is a dreadful evil. It used to be a 
common English disease, but it is now nearly un- 
known in most parts of our country. Oliver Cromwell 
died of it, and in Lincoln it was one of the most 
prevalent maladies. I remember meeting an old 
Englishwoman who firmly believed in the old recipe 
for its cure, of a spider steeped in a glass of wine 
and swallowed with it. That was the way, she said, 
it had been cured in her part, and nothing could be 
better ! 

A terrible misfortune befell a worthy man residing 
back from the river, one spring, through his son — a 
growing boy — eating some wild parsnips in ignorance 
of their being poisonous. The poor little fellow 



330 Children in the Woods.. 

lingered for a time, and at last died in agony. This 
must be reckoned among the risks families run in the 
bush. I have known a number of cases of a similar 
kind. 

One day we were startled by a man crying to us 
from the road that two children of a settler, a few 
miles back, were lost in the woods, and that all the 
neighbours were out, searching for them. We lost 
no time in hurrying to the place, and found that the 
news was only too true. The two little creatures — 
a sister and brother — had wandered into the woods 
to pull the early anemones, which come out with the 
wild leeks, by the sides of creeks and wet places, at 
the beginning of spring, and they had gradually run 
to one flower after another, till they were fairly lost. 
The excitement was terrible. Men and women alike 
left everything, to search for them. The forest was 
filled with the sound of their names, which voice 
after voice called out, in hopes of catching an an- 
swer. Night came, and all the searchers returned 
unsuccessful, but there were others who kindled 
lights, and spent the darkness in their kind efforts. 
But it was of no use. Two — three — four — five — 
six days passed, and the lost ones were still in the 
great silent woods. At last, on the seventh day, 
they came on them, but almost too late. The two 
were lying on the ground — the little girl dead, the boy 
far gone. Tender nursing, however, brought him 
round, and he was able to tell, after a while, that they 



Lost in the Woods. 331 

had wandered hither and thither, as long as they could, 
eating the wild leeks, bitter and burning as they 
are, until the two could go no further. He did not 
know that his sister was dead till they told him. It 
was touching to see his father and mother swayed by 
the opposite feelings of grief for the dead and joy for 
the living. 

Another time, in the winter, on a piercingly cold 
night, we were roused from our seats round the fire, by 
the cries of some one at a distance. Going to the 
door, we found it was an unfortunate fellow who had 
got bewildered by the snow covering the waggon 
tracks in a path through the bush, and who was 
trying to make himself heard, before the neighbours 
went to bed. It was lucky for him we had not done so, 
for our hours were very early indeed. It was so cold 
that we could only stand a few minutes at the door 
by turns, but we answered his cries, and had the 
satisfaction of finding that he was getting nearer and 
nearer the open. At last, after about half an hour, 
he reached the high road, and was safe. But the 
fellow actually had not politeness to come up next 
day, or any time after, to say he was obliged by our 
saving his life. 

A poor woman, not far from us, had lost her hus- 
band in the forest, many years before, under circum- 
stances of peculiar trial. She was then newly married, 
and a stranger in the country, and he had gone out to 
chop wood at some distance from their house, but 



$$1 Lost in the Woods. 

had been unable to find his way back. His wife and 
the neighbours searched long and earnestly for him, 
but their utmost efforts failed to find him. Months 
passed on, and not a word was heard of him until, at 
last, after more than a year, some persons came upon 
a human skeleton, many miles from the place, lying 
in the woods, with an axe at its side, the clothes on 
which showed that it was the long-lost man. He had 
wandered farther and farther from his home, living on 
whatever he could get in the woods, till death, at last, 
ended his sorrows. 

I shall never forget the story of a man who had 
been lost for many days, but had, at last, luckily 
wandered near some human habitations, and had 
escaped. He was a timber-squarer — that is, he 
squared the great trees which were intended for ex- 
portation, the squaring making them lie closely to- 
gether, and thus effecting a saving in freight, and had 
been employed on the Georgian Bay, amongst the 
huge pine forests from which so many of those won- 
derful masts, so much prized, are brought. His cabin 
was at a good distance from his work, which lay now 
at one point, and now at another. Fortunately it was 
fine mild autumn weather, else he would have paid 
with his life for his misadventure. On the morning of 
the unfortunate day, he had set out at a very early 
hour,leaving his wife and family in the expectation that 
he would return at night, or within a few days at most. 
For a great wonder, a fog chanced to be lying on the 



Lost in the Woods. ^^ 

ground, hiding everything at a few yards' distance, but 
he took it for granted that he knew the road and 
never thought of any danger. On, therefore, he 
walked for some time, expecting, every moment, to 
come on some indication of his approach to his place 
of work. At last, the fog rose, and, to his surprise, 
showed that he had walked till nearly noon, and was 
in a spot totally unknown to him. Every tree around 
seemed the counterpart of its neighbour, and flowers 
and ferns were on all sides the same; nothing 
offered any distinguishing marks by which to help him 
to decide where he was. The path along which he had 
walked was a simple trail, the mere beaten footsteps 
of woodmen or Indians passing occasionally, and to 
add to his perplexity, every here and there other trails 
crossed it, at different angles, with nothing to dis- 
tinguish the one from the other. 

It was not for some hours more, however, that he 
began to feel alarmed. He took it for granted he had 
gone too far, or had turned a little to one side, and 
that he had only to go back, to come to the place 
he wished to reach. Back, accordingly, he forthwith 
turned, resting only to eat his dinner which he had 
brought with him from home. But, to his utter dis- 
may, he saw the sun getting lower and lower, without 
any sign of his nearing his ' limit.' Grey shades began 
to stretch through the trees ; the silence around 
became more oppressive as they increased ; the long 
white moss on the trees, as he passed a swamp, looked 



334 Lost in the Woods. 

the very image of desolation ; and, at last, he felt 
convinced that he was lost. As evening closed, every 
living thing around hirn seemed happy but he. Like 
the castaway on the ocean, who sees the sea-birds 
skimming the hollows of the waves or toppling over 
their crests, joyful, as if they felt at home, he noticed 
the squirrels disappearing in their holes ; the crows 
flying lazily to their roosts ; all the creatures of the day 
betaking themselves to their rest. There was no 
moon that night, and if there had been, he was too 
tired to walk further by its light He could do no more 
than remain where he was till the morning came again. 
Sitting down with his back against a great tree, he 
thought of everything by turns. Turning round, he 
prayed on his bended knees, then sat down again in his 
awful loneliness. Phosphoric lights gleamed from the 
decayed trees on the ground • myriads of insects filled 
the air, and the hooting of owls, and the sweep of 
night-hawks and bats, served to fill his mind with 
gloomy fears, but ever and anon, his mind reverted 
to happier thoughts, and to a growing feeling of 
confidence that he should regain his way on the 
morrow. 

With the first light he was on his feet once more, 
after offering a prayer to his Maker, asking His help 
in this terrible trial. He had ceased to conjecture 
where he was, and had lost even the aid of a vague 
track. Nevertheless, if he could only push on, he 
thought he must surely effect his escape before long. 



Lost in the Woods. 2>?>5 

The sun had a great sweep to make, and he was young 
and strong. Faster and faster he pressed forwards as 
the hours passed, the agony of his mind driving him 
on the more hurriedly as his hopes grew fainter. 
Fatigue, anxiety, and hunger were meanwhile growing 
more and more unbearable. His nerves seemed fairly 
unstrung, and as he threw himself on the ground to 
spend a second night in the wilderness, the shadow of 
death seemed to lower over him. Frantic at his awful 
position, he tore his hair, and beat his breast, and 
wept like a child. He might, he knew, be near home, 
but he might, on the other hand, be far distant from 
it. He had walked fifty miles he was sure, and where 
in this interminable wilderness had he reached ? His 
only food through the day had been some wild fruits 
and berries, which were very scarce, and so acrid that 
they pained his gums as he ate them. He had passed 
no stream, but had found water in holes of fallen trees. 
What he suffered that night no one can realize who 
has not been in some similar extremity. He had no 
weapon but his axe, and hence, even if he came upon 
deer or other creatures, he could not kill them — there 
seemed no way to get out of the horrible labyrinth in 
which he was now shut up. From the morning of the 
third day his mind, he assured me, became so be- 
wildered that he could recollect very little of what 
then took place. How he lived he could hardly say — 
it must have been on frogs, and snakes, and grass, 
and weeds, as well as berries, for there were too few 



33& Lost in the Woods. 

of these last to keep him alive. Once he was fortunate 
enough to come on a tortoise, which he could not 
resist the temptation to kill, though he knew that if he 
followed it quietly it would guide him to some stream, 
and thus afford him the means of escape. Its raw 
flesh gave him two great meals. His clothes were in 
tatters, his face begrimed, his hair and beard matted, 
his eyes hot and bloodshot, and his strength was fail- 
ing fast. On the tenth day he thought he could go 
no farther, but must lie down and die. But deliver- 
ance was now at hand. As he lay, half unconscious 
from weakness of body and nervous exhaustion, he 
fancied he heard the dip of oars. In an instant every 
faculty was revived. His ear seemed to gather un- 
natural quickness ; he could have heard the faintest 
sound at a great distance. Mustering all his strength, 
he rose, and with the utmost haste made for the 
direction from which the cheering sound proceeded. 
Down some slopes — up opposite banks — and there at 
last the broad water lay before him. He could not 
rest with the mere vision of hope, so on he rushed 
through the thick brush, over the fretting of fallen 
timber and the brown carpet of leaves, till he reached 
the river-bank, which was sloping at the point where 
he emerged, a tongue of land jutting out into the 
water, clear of trees. To the end of this, with anxiety 
indescribable, he ran, and kneeled in the attitude of 
prayer at once to God for his merciful deliverance, 
and to man, when the boat should come, whose ap- 



Lost in the Woods. ^37 

proach he now heard more clearly from afar, — that he 
might be taken to some human dwelling. The boat 
did come — his feeble cry reached it, and in a moment, 
when they saw his thin arms waving for help as he 
kneeled before them, the bows were turned to the 
shore, and he was taken on board — the lost one 
found ! He fainted as soon as he was rescued, and 
such was his state of exhaustion, that at first it seemed 
almost impossible to revive him. But by the care of 
his wife, to whom he was restored as soon as possible, 
he gradually gathered strength, and when I saw him 
some years after was hearty and vigorous. The place 
where he was found was full thirty miles from his own 
house, and he must have wandered altogether at least 
a hundred and fifty miles — probably in a series of 
circles round nearly the same points. 



338 




CHAPTER XXI. 

A tornado — Bats — Deserted lots— American inquisitiveness — 
An election agent. 

HAVE already spoken of the belt of trees 
running back some miles from us, fami- 
liarly called 'The Windfall/ from their 
having been thrown down by a hurricane 
many years before. Some years after, when living for 
a time in another part of the province, I had a vivid 
illustration of what these terrible storms really are. It 
was a fine day, and I was jogging along quietly on my 
horse. It was in the height of summer, and every- 
thing around was in all the glory of the season. The 
tall mints, with their bright flowers, the lofty Aaron's 
rod, the beautiful Virginia creeper, the wild convol- 
vulus, and wild roses, covered the roadsides, and ran, as 
far as the light permitted them, into the openings of 
the forest. The country was a long roll of gentle un- 
dulations, with clear streamlets every here and there in 
the hollows. The woods themselves presented a per- 
petual picture of beauty as I rode along. High above, 
rose the great oaks, and elms, and beeches, and 
maples, with their tall trunks free of branches till they 



A Tornado. 339 

stretched far overhead; while round their feet, not 
too thickly, but in such abundance as made the scene 
perfect, waved young trees of all these kinds inter- 
mixed with silver birches and sumachs. My horse 
had stopped of his own accord to drink at one of the 
brooks that brawled under the rude bridges across 
the road, when, happening to look up, I noticed a 
strange appearance in the sky, which I had not ob- 
served before. A thick haze was descending on the 
earth, like the darkness that precedes a storm. Yet 
there was no other sign of any approaching convul- 
sion of nature. There was a profound hush and gloom, 
but what it might forebode did not as yet appear. I 
was not, however, left long in ignorance. Scarcely 
had my horse taken its last draught and forded across 
the brook, than a low murmuring sound in the air, 
coming from a distance, and unlike anything I had 
ever heard before, arrested my attention. A yellow 
spot in the haze towards the south-west likewise at- 
tracted my notice. The next moment the tops of 
the taller trees began to swing in the wind, which 
presently increased in force, and the light branches 
and twigs began to break off. I was glad I happened 
to be at an open spot, out of reach of immediate 
danger, the edges •of the brook being cleared for some 
distance on both sides. Two minutes more, and the 
storm burst on the forest in all its violence. Huge 
trees swayed to and fro under its rude shock like the 
masts of ships on a tempestuous sea ; they rubbed 



34° 



A Tornado. 



and creaked like a ship's timbers when she rolls, and 
the sky grew darker and darker, as if obscured by 
a total eclipse of the sun. It was evident that the 
fury of the storm would not sweep through the open 
where I stood, but would spend itself on the woods 
before me. Meanwhile, as I looked, the huge oaks 
and maples bent before the tornado, the air was thick 
with] their huge limbs, twisted off in a moment, and 
the trees themselves were falling in hundreds beneath 
the irresistible power of the storm. I noticed that 
they always fell with their heads in the direction of 
the hurricane, as if they had been wrenched round 
and flung behind it as it passed. Some went down 
bodily, others broke across, all yielded and sank in 
ruin and confusion. The air got blacker and blacker 
— a cloud of branches and limbs of trees filled the 
whole breadth of the tempest, some of them flung by 
it, every now and then, high up in the air, or dashed 
with amazing violence to the ground. A few minutes 
more, and # it swept on to make similar havoc in other 
parts? But it was long before the air was clear of 
the wreck of the forest. The smaller branches 
seemed to float in it as if upheld by some current that 
was sucked on by the hurricane, though unfelt on 
the surface of the ground. In a surprisingly short 
time a belt of the woods, about an eighth of a mile in 
breadth, and running I cannot tell how far back, was 
one vast chaos, through which no human efforts could 



A Tornado. 341 

find a way. The same night, as we afterwards 
learned, the tornado had^ struck points incredibly dis- 
tant, taking a vast sweep across Lake Ontario, ravaging 
a part of New York, and finally rushing away to the 
north in the neighbourhood of Quebec. 

The destruction it caused was not limited to its 
ravages in the forest; farmhouses, barns, orchards, 
and fences, were .swept away like chaff. I passed 
one orchard in which every tree had been dragged 
up and blown away ; the fences for miles, in the path 
of the storm, were carried into the air like straws, 
never to be found again ; the water in a mill-pond 
by the roadside was lifted fairly out of it, and the 
bottom left bare. At one place a barn and stables 
had been wrenched into fragments, the contents scat- 
tered to the winds, and the very horses lifted into 
the air, and carried some distance. Saw-mills were 
stripped of their whole stock of ' lumber/ every plank 
being swept up into the vortex, and strewn no one 
knew whither. There were incidents as curious as 
extraordinary in the events of the day. A ' sheep 
was found on one farm, uninjured, beneath a huge 
iron kettle, which had been carried off and capsized 
over the poor animal, as if in sport. Wherever the 
storm passed through the forest was, from that mo- 
ment, a tangled desolation, left to itself, except by 
the beasts that might choose a safe covert in its re- 
cesses. Thenceforth, the briars and bushes would 



34 2 Bats. 

have it for their own, and grow undisturbed. No 
human footstep would ever turn towards it till all the 
standing forest around had been cut down. 

The bats were very plentiful in summer, and used 
often to fly into the house, to the great terror of my 
sister Margaret, who used to be as afraid of a bat as 
BufFon was of a squirrel. They were no larger than 
our English bats, and un distinguishable from them to 
an ordinary eye. Almost as often as we went out on 
the fine warm evenings, we were attracted by their fly- 
ing hither and thither below the branches of the trees, 
or out in the open ground, beating the air with great 
rapidity with their wonderful membranous wings. A 
bird peculiar to America used to divide attention with 
them in the twilight — the famous ' whip-poor-will,' one 
of the family of the goatsuckers ; of which, in Eng- 
land, the night-jar is a well-known example. It is 
amazing how distinctly the curious sounds, from which 
it takes its name, are given ; they are repeated incess- 
antly, and create no little amusement when they come 
from a number of birds at once. The flight of the 
whip-poor-will is very rapid, and they double, and 
twist, and turn in a surprising way. Their food is the 
larger moths and insects, any of which, I should think, 
they could swallow, for it is true in their case at least, 
that their ' mouth is from ear to ear/ The gape is 
enormous, reaching even behind the eye ; and woe 
betide any unfortunate moths or chaffers that may cross 
theii path. It sees perfectly by night, but is purblind 



Deserted Lots. 343 

by day, its huge eye showing, the moment you see it, 
that, like that of the owls, it is for service in partial 
darkness. The light completely confuses it, so that, 
until sunset, it is never seen, unless when one comes 
by accident upon its resting-place, where it sits sleep- 
ing on some log or low branch, from which it will only 
fly a very short distance if disturbed, alighting again 
as soon as possible, and dozing off forthwith. They 
used to come in June, and enliven the evenings till 
September, when they left us again for the south. 
Some people used to think it fine sport to shoot birds 
so swift of flight ; but, somehow, I could never bring 
myself to touch creatures that spoke my own language, 
however imperfectly. 

Immediately behind our lot was one which often 
struck me as very desolate-looking when I had to go 
to it to bring home the cows at night. A field had 
been cleared, and a house built, but both field and 
house were deserted : long swamp grass grew thick in 
the hollows ; nettles, and roses, and bushes of all 
kinds, climbed up, outside and in \ the roof was gone, 
and only the four walls were left. I never learned 
more than the name of the person who had expended 
so much labour on the place, and then abandoned it 
But there were other spots just like it all over the 
bush ; spots where settlers had begun with high hopes ; 
had worked hard for a time, until they lost heart, or 
had been stopped by some insurmountable obstacle, 
and had deserted the home they had once been so 



344 American Inquisitiveness. 

proud of. One case I knew was caused by a touching 
incident of bush-life. A young, hearty man, had gone 
out in the morning to chop at his clearing, but had 
not returned at dinner, and was found by his wife, 
when she went to look for him, lying on his back, 
dead, with a tree he had felled resting on his breast. 
It had slipped back, perhaps, off the stump in falling, 
and had crushed him beneath it. What agony such 
an accident in such circumstances must have caused 
to the sufferer ! The poor fellow's wife could do no- 
thing even towards extricating her husband's body, but 
had to leave it there till the neighbours came, and 
chopped the tree in two, so that it could be got away. 
No wonder she ' sold out,' and left the scene of so 
great a calamity. 

Every one has heard of the inquisitiveness of both 
Scotchmen and Americans. I allude more particularly 
to those of the humbler ranks. I have often laughed 
at the examples we met with in our intercourse not 
only with these races, but with the less polished of 
others, also, in Canada. I was going down to Detroit 
on the little steamer which used to run between that 
town and Lake Huron — a steamer so small that it was 
currently reported among the boys, that one very stout 
lady in the township had made it lurch when she went 
on board — and had got on the upper deck to look 
round. The little American village on the opposite 
side was c called at,' and left, in a very few minutes, 
and we were off again past the low shores of the river. 



A merican Inquisitiveness. 3 45 

A little pug-nosed man, in a white hat and white linen 
jacket, was the only one up beside me ; and it was 
not in his nature, evidently, that we should be long 
without talking. ' Fine captain on this here boat ? ' 
said he. I agreed with him offhand ; that is, I took it 
for granted he was so. ' Yes, he's the likeliest captain 
I've seen since I left Ohio. How plain you see what 
the boat run — look ! Well we're leaving County- 
Seat right straight, I guess. Whar you born ? ' 
t Where do you think ? ' I answered. ' Either Ireland 
or Scotland, anyhow/ ' No. You're Irish, at any rate, 
I suppose ? ' — I struck in. "' No, sirr — no, sirree — I'm 
Yankee born, and bred in Yankee town, and my 
parents afore me. Are you travelling altogether ? ' I 
asked him what he meant, for I really didn't under- 
stand this question. 'Why travelling for a living — ■ 
what do you sell ? ^ On my telling him he was wrong 
for once, he seemed a little confounded ; but presently 
recovered, and drew a bottle out of his breast-pocket, 
adding, as he did so — ' Will you take some bitters ? ' 
I thanked him, and said, I was ' temperance/ * You 
don't drink none, then ? Well, I do ; ' on which he 
suited the action to the word, putting the bottle back 
in its place again, after duly wiping his lips on his cuff. 
But his. questions were not done yet 'Whar you 
live ? ' I told him. ' Married man ? ' I said I had 
not the happiness of being so. ' How long since you 
came from England ? ' I answered, ' You remember 
when you came?' I said- 1 hoped I did, else my 



346 An Election Agent. 

faculties must be failing. c I guess you, were pretty 
long on the waters ? ' But I was getting tired of his 
impudence, and so gave him a laconic answer, and 
dived into the cabin out of his way. 

I was very much amused at a rencontre between 
the l captain/ who seemed a really respectable man, 
and another of the passengers, who, it appeared, had 
come on board without having money to pay his fare. 
The offender was dressed in an unbleached linen 
blouse, with ' dandy ' trowsers, wide across the body, 
and tapering to the feet, with worn straps of the 
same material ; old boots of a fashionable make, an 
open waistcoat, and an immensity of dirty-white shirt- 
breast ; a straw hat, and a long green and lilac ribbon 
round it. A cigar in his mouth, a mock ring on his 
finger, and a very bloodshot eye, completed the picture. 
It seemed he was a subordinate electioneering agent, 
sent round to make stump speeches for his party, and, 
generally, to influence votes ; and the trouble with the 
captain evidently rose from his wishing to have his fare 
charged to the committee who sent him out, rather than 
pay it himself. The captain certainly gave him no 
quarter. i He's a low, drunken watchmaker,' said he, 
turning to me ; I saw him last night spouting away for 
General Cass on the steps of the church at Huron. 
The fellow wants to get off without paying — I suppose 
we'll have to let him.' And he did. He got through 
to the journey's end. 



347 




CHAPTER XXII. 

k journey to Niagara — River St Clair — Detroit — A slave's escape 
— An American steamer — Description of the Falls of Niagara 
— Fearful catastrophe. 

| HE country on the St Clair, though beauti- 
ful from the presence of the river, was, in 
itself, flat and tame enough. All Canada 
West, indeed, is remarkably level. The 
ridge of limestone hills which runs across from the 
State of New York at Niagara, and stretches to the 
north, is the only elevation greater than the round 
swells, which, in some parts, make the landscape look 
like a succession of broad black waves. The borders 
of the St Clair itself were higher than the land imme- 
diately behind them, so that a belt of swamp ran 
parallel with the stream, rich reaches of black soil 
rising behind it, through township after township. 
The list of natural sights in such a part was not great, 
though the charms of the few there were were unfad- 
ing. There was the river itself, and there was the vast 
leafy ocean of tree-tops, with the great aisles with in- 
numerable pillars stretching away underneath like 
some vast cathedral of nature; but these were common 



348 Detroit. 

to all the country. The One Wonder of the land was 
at a distance. It was Niagara. How we longed to see 
it ! But it was some years before any of us could, 
and there was no opportunity of going together. I 
had to set out by myself. It was in the month of 
September, just before the leaves began to turn. The 
weather was glorious — not too warm, and as bright as 
in Italy. I started in the little steamer for Detroit, 
*fc passing the Indian settlement at Walpole Island, 
the broad flats covered with coarse grass, towards the 
entrance of Lake St Clair, and, at last, threading the 
lake itself, through the channel marked out across its 
shallow and muddy breadth, by long lines of poles, 
like telegraphs on each side of a street. Detroit was 
the London of all the folks on the river. They 
bought everything they wanted there, it being easy of 
access, and its size offering a larger choice than could 
be obtained elsewhere. It is a great and growing 
place ; though, in the lifetime of a person still living 
— General Cass — it was only the little French village 
which it had been for a hundred years before. Taking 
the steamer to Buffalo, which started in an hour or two 
after I got to Detroit, I was once more on my way as 
the afternoon was drawing to a close. We were to call 
at various British ports, so that I had a chance of 
seeing different parts of the province that I had not 
yet visited. The first step in our voyage was to cross 
to Sandwich, the village on the Canadian shore, 
opposite Detroit, from which it is less than a mile dis- 



A Slave's Escape. 349 

tant. I was glad to see a spot so sacred to liberty — 
for Sandwich is the great point which the fugitive 
slaves, from every part of the Union, eagerly attempt 
to reach. I felt proud of my country at the thought 
that it was no vain boast, but a glorious truth, that 
slaves could not breathe in England, nor on British 
soil; that the first touch of it by the foot of the 
bondsman broke his fetters and made him free for 
ever. I was so full of the thought, that when we 
were once more under weigh it naturally became the 
subject of conversation with an intelligent fellow- 
traveller, who had come on board at Sandwich. ' I 
was standing at my door/ said he, ' a week or two 
ago, when I saw a skiff with a man in it, rowing, in 
hot haste, to our side. How the oars flashed — how 
his back bent to them — how he pulled ! It was soon 
evident what was his object. As he came near, I saw 
he was a negro. Though no one was pursuing, he 
could not take it easy, and, at last, with a great bend, 
he swept up to the bank, pulled up the skiff, and ran 
up to the road, leaping, throwing up his hat in the air, 
shouting, singing, laughing — in short, fairly beside him- 
self with excitement. " I'm free ! I'm free ! — no more 
slave !" was the burden of his loud rejoicing, and it 
was long before he calmed down enough for any 
one to ask him his story. He had come all the way 
up the Mississippi from Arkansas, travelling by night, 
lying in the woods by day, living on corn pulled from 
the fields or on poultry he could catch round farm- 



3$o A Slaves Escape. 

houses or negro quarters ; sometimes eating them raw, 
lest the smoke of his fire should discover him. At 
last he reached Illinois, a free State, after long weeks 
of travel ; but here his worst troubles began. Not 
being able to give a very clear account of himself, they 
put him in jail as a " fugitive." But he gave a wrong 
name instead of his own, and a wrong State instead of 
that from which he had come. He told them, in fact, 
he had come from Maryland, which was at the very 
opposite side of the Union from Arkansas, and was 
kept in jail for a whole year, while they were advertis- 
ing him, to try to get some owner to claim him, and 
they let him " off only w T hen none appeared in the 
whole twelve months. This ordeal passed, he gradu- 
ally made his way to Detroit, and now, after running 
such a terrible gauntlet, he had risen from a mere 
chattel to be a man ! ' Seeing the interest I took in 
the incident, he went on to tell me others equally 
exciting. One which I remember, was the rescue of 
a slave from some officers who had discovered him in 
one of the frontier towns of the States, and were 
taking him, bound, like a sheep, to Buffalo, to carry 
him off to his master in the South. Indignant at such 
treatment of a fellow-man, a young Englishman, who 
had since been a member of the Canadian Parliament, 
and was then on the boat with him, determined, if 
possible, to cheat the men-stealers of their prey. 
Breaking his design to the coloured cook, and through 
him, getting the secret aid of all the other coloured 



An American Steamer. 351 

men on the boat, he waited till they reached Buffalo, 
some of the confederates having previously told the 
poor slave the scheme that was afoot. As the boat 
got alongside the wharf, seizing a moment when his 
guards had left him, the gallant young fellow effectu- 
ally severed the rope that bound the slave, and, telling 
him to follow him instantly, dashed over the gangway 
to the wharf, and leaped into a skiff which was lying 
at hand, with oars in it ready, the negro following at 
his heels in a moment ; then, pushing off, he struck 
out into the lake, and reached Canada safely with his 
living triumph. The story made a thrill run through 
me. It was a brave deed daringly done. The risk 
was great, but the object was noble, and he must have 
had a fine spirit who braved the one to accomplish the 
other. 

The steamer itself was very different from those 
with which I had been familiar in England. Instead 
of cabins entirely below the deck, the body of the 
ship was reserved for a dining-room, surrounded by 
berths, and one portion of it covered in for cargo ; 
the ladies' cabin was raised on the back part of the 
main deck, with a walk all round it ; then came an 
open space with sofas, which was like a hall or lobby 
for receiving passengers or letting them out. Next 
to this, at the sides, was a long set of offices, facing 
the engine-room in the centre, and reaching beyond 
the paddle-boxes, both the side and central structures 
being continued for some distance, to make places for 



3$z An American Steamer. 

the cook's galley, for a bar for selling spirits and cigars, 
for a barber's shop, and for I know not what other 
conveniences. Covering in all these, an upper deck 
stretched the whole length of the ship, and on this 
rose the great cabin, a long room, provided with sofas, 
mirrors, carpets, a piano, and every detail of a huge 
drawing-room, — innumerable doors at each side open- 
ing into sleeping places for the gentlemen travellers. 
It was a fine sight, with its profusion of gilding and 
white paint on the walls and ceiling, its paintings on 
panels at regular intervals all round, its showy furni- 
ture, and its company of both sexes. You could get 
on the top even of this cabin, if you liked, or, if you 
thought you were high enough, might go out on the 
open space at each end, where seats in abundance 
awaited occupants. The whole structure, seen from 
the wharf when it stopped at any place, was liker a 
floating house than a ship, and seemed very strange 
to me at first, with its two stories above the deck, 
and its innumerable doors and windows, and its 
dazzling white colour from stem to stern. Such 
vessels may do well enough for calm weather or for 
rivers, but they are far from safe in a storm at any 
distance from land. The wind catches them so 
fiercely on their great high works that they are like 
to capsize, when a low-built ship would be in no 
danger. Indeed, we had a proof of this on coming 
out of Buffalo to cross to Chippewa ; for as the wind 
had blown during the night while we were ashore, 



An American Steamer. r*>i?> 

we found when we started again next morning that 
the shallow water of that part of the lake was pretty 
rough, and our way leading us almost into the trough 
of the waves, the boat swayed so much to each side 
alternately that the captain got all the passengers 
gathered in a body, and made them run from the low 
to the high side by turns, to keep it from swamping. 
The water was actually coming in on the main deck 
at every roll. It was very disagreeable to have such 
a tumbling about, but this ugly state of things did 
not last long. The smooth water of the Niagara was 
soon reached, and we were gliding down to within 
about three miles or so of the Falls, as quietly and 
carelessly as if no such awful gulf were so near. I 
could not help thinking how terrible it would have 
been had any accident. injured our machinery in such 
a position. There certainly were no sails on the 
boat, and I greatly question if there was an anchor, 
the short distance of her trips making one generally 
unnecessary. At last we got safely into Chippewa 
Creek, and all chance of danger had passed away. 

Long before reaching this haven of refuge, a white 
mist, steadily rising, and disappearing high in the air, 
had marked with unmistakable certainty our near ap- 
proach to the grand spectacle I had come to see. 
Never for a moment still, it had risen and sunk, grown 
broader and lighter, melted into one great cloud, or 
broken into waves of white vapour, from the time I 
had first seen it ; and had made me restless till I was 
23 



354 The Falls of Niagara. 

safely on shore. The sensation was painful — a kind 
of instinct of danger, and an uneasiness till it was 
past. Having nothing to detain me, I determined to 
lose no time in getting to the Falls themselves ; and 
therefore, leaving my portmanteau to be sent on 
after me, I set out for them on foot. There is a 
beautiful broad road to the spot, and it was in ex- 
cellent order, as the fall rains had not yet com- 
menced, so that I jogged an merrily, and was soon at 
my journey's end at Drummondville, the village near 
the Falls, on the Canada side, where I resolved to 
stay for some days. One of the finest views of the 
great wonder burst upon my sight during this walk. 
On a sudden, at a turn of the road, an opening in the 
trees showed me the Falls from behind, in the very 
bend downwards to the gulf beneath. The awful 
gliding of the vast mass of waters into an abyss which, 
from that position, only showed its presence without 
revealing its depth, filled me with indescribable awe. 
Over the edge, whither, I as yet knew not, were de- 
scending, in unbroken volume, millions of tons of 
water. Above, rose the ever-changing clouds of 
vapour, like the smoke from a vast altar, and behind, 
looking up the river, were the struggling waves of 
the rapids, covering the whole breadth of the stream 
with bars of restless white. After seeing Niagara 
from every other point of view, I think this is one of 
the finest. The leap into the hidden depths has in 
it something awful beyond any power of description. 



The Falls of Niagara. 355 

You may be sure I did full justice to the oppor- 
tunities my visit afforded me, and kept afoot, day after 
day, with praiseworthy diligence. My first walk to 
the Falls, from the village, brought me, through a 
break in a sandy bank, to a spot from which nothing 
could be seen at the bottom of a gorge but the ' 
white foam of the American Fall. The trees rilled 
each side of .the descent, arching overhead, and made 
the vista even more beautiful than the wild outline 
of the bank itself would have been; the water, like 
sparkling snow, drifting in long tongues down the 
face of the hidden rocks, filling up the whole view 
beyond. It depended on the position of the sun 
whether the picture were one of dazzling white or 
more or less dulled ; but at all times the falling water, 
broken into spray and partially blown back as it 
descended, by the force of the air, was one of sur- 
passing beauty. The American Fall, though nine 
hundred feet wide, has only a small part of the cur- 
rent passing over it, and it is this shallowness that 
makes it break into foam at the moment of its de- 
scent. Emerging on the road at the edge of the river, 
the great Horse-shoe was at once before me on my 
right hand. No wonder the Indians called it ' Ni- 
wa-gay-rah '— the ' Thunder of Waters.' A mass of 
a hundred millions of tons of water, falling a depth of 
a hundred and fifty feet in the course of a single 
hour, while you stand by, may well give such a sound 
as overwhelms the listener's sense of hearing. It is 



3 $6 The Falls of Niagara. 

no use attempting to picture the scene. It was some 
time before I could go near the edge, but at last, 
when my head was less dizzy, I went out on the 
projecting point called the Table Rock, which has, 
however, long since fallen into the abyss, and there, 
on a mere ledge, from which all beneath had been 
eaten away by the spray, I could let the spectacle 
gradually fill my mind. You cannot see Niagara at 
once; it takes day after day to realize its vastness. 
I was astonished at the slow unbroken fall of the 
water. So vast is the quantity hanging in the air 
at any one moment, that it moves down in a great 
green sheet, with a slow, awful descent. The patches 
of white formed in spots here and there showed how 
majestically it goes down to the abyss. Think of 
such a launching of a great river, two thousand feet 
in breadth, over a sudden precipice — the smooth 
flow above — the green crest — the massy solidity of 
the descent — and then the impenetrable clouds of 
watery spray that hide the bottom. Yet at the edge 
it was so shallow that one might have waded some 
steps into it without apparent danger. Indeed, I 
noticed men one day damming it back some feet, in 
a vain attempt to get out the body of a poor man 
who had leaped over. They hoped it would be found 
jammed among the rocks at the bottom, within reach, 
if this side water were forced back. But if it ever 
had been, it was since washed away, and no efforts 
could recover it. Descending a spiral staircase close 



The Falls of Niagara. 357 

to the Table Rock, I had another view from below ; 
and what words can convey the impression of the 
deep, trembling boom of the waters, as you caught 
it thus confined in the abyss ? It was terrible to look 
into the cauldron, smoking, heaving, foaming, rush- 
ing, as far as the eye could see through the mist. A 
slope of fragments from the side of the rock offered 
a slippery path up to the thick curtain of the Falls, 
and you could even go behind it if you chose. But 
1 had not nerve enough to do so, though several par- 
ties ventured in, after having put on oil-skin clothes ; 
guides, who live in part by the occupation, leading 
them on their way. Overhead, Table Rock reached 
far out, awaiting its fall, which I felt sure could not 
be long delayed. In crossing it I noticed a broad 
crack, which each successive year would, of course, 
deepen. On every ledge, up to the top of the pre- 
cipice, grass and flowers, nourished by the incessant 
spray, relieved the bareness, and in the middle of the 
river, dividing the Horse-shoe Fall from the American, 
the trees on Goat Island dimly showed themselves 
through the ascending smoke. The vast sweep of 
waters bending round the Horse-shoe for more than 
the third of a mile, was hemmed in at the further 
side by masses of rock, the lower end of Goat Island 
projecting roughly from the torrents at each side, 
so as to hide part of the more distant one from my 
sight. A hill of fragments from its face lay heaped 
up in the centre, and more thinly scattered at the 



3 $8 The Falls of Niagara. 

farther side. But I could pay little attention to de- 
tails, with the huge cauldron within a few yards of 
me, into which the great green walls of water were 
being every moment precipitated, and which, broken 
into sheets of foam, hissed, and lashed, and raged, and 
boiled, in wild uproar, as far as my eye could reach. 
The contrast between the solemn calmness of the 
great sheet of green ever gliding down in the centre, 
with the curtain of snowy wreaths at its edges, where 
the stream above, from its shallowness, broke into 
white crystalline rain in the moment of its first descent, 
and the tossing, smoking storm beneath, was over- 
powering, and — accompanied as it ever was with the 
stunning, deafening noise of three thousand six 
hundred millions of cubic feet of water falling in 
an hour, from so great a height — filled my mind with 
a sense of the awful majesty and power of God such as 
I scarcely remember to have felt elsewhere. 

Being anxious to cross to the American side, I 
walked down the side of the river, after having as- 
cended to the top of the bank, and at last, about a 
mile below, found a road running slowly down to the 
level of the water, the slope having brought me back 
to within a comparatively short distance of the Fall. 
It would have been impossible to have reached this 
point by keeping along below, the broken heaps of 
rock making the way impracticable. The river at 
the place I had now gained is, however, so wonder- 
fully calm that a ferry-boat plies between the British 



The Falls of Niagara. 359 

and American shores, and by this I crossed. Some 
ladies who were in it seemed, at first, in some measure 
alarmed by the heaving of the water, but as the sur- 
face was unbroken, and reflection showed that it must 
be safe, they soon resigned themselves to the charms 
of the view around. Forthwith, the boat was in the 
centre of a vast semicircle of descending floods, more 
than three thousand feet in their sweep, and on the 
edge of the foaming sheets of the unfathomable gulf, 
into which they were thundering down. The grand 
cliffs on each side, the brown rocks of Goat Island 
in the midst, the fringe of huge trees in the distance 
on every hand, the clouds of spray which rose in 
thick smoke from the tormented waters — the whole 
pierced and lighted up by the rays of a glorious sun, 
made a scene of surpassing beauty. I could not, 
however, take my eyes for more than a moment from 
the overwhelming grandeur of the main feature in the 
picture. Still, down, in their awful, dense, stupendous 
floods, came the waters, gathered from the inland seas 
of a continent, pouring as if another deluge were 
about to overwhelm all things. But, high over them, 
in the ever-rising clouds of vapour, stretched a great 
rain-bow, as if to remind us of the solemn pledge 
given of old, and the very edges of the mist glittered, 
as each beat of the oar sent us on, with a succession 
of prismatic colours, the broken fragments of others 
which shone for a moment and then passed away. 
The ascent at the American side was accomplished 



360 The Falls of Niagara. 

by a contrivance which I think must be almost unique. 
A strong wooden railroad has been laid, at a most 
perilous slope, from the bottom to the top of the cliff, 
and a conveyance which is simply three huge wooden 
steps on wheels, furnishes the means of ascent, a 
wheel at the top driven by water, twisting it up, by a 
cable passed round a windlass. I could not help 
shuddering at the consequence of any accident that 
might occur, from so precarious an arrangement. 
Goat Island is one of the great attractions on this 
farther side, and is reached by a bridge which makes 
one half forget the wildness of the gulf across which it 
is stretched. There is a house on the Island in which 
I found refreshments and Indian curiosities for sale, 
but as I was more interested in the Falls for the 
moment than in anything else, I pushed on by a path 
which turned to the right and led straight to them. 
A small island on the very edge of the precipice, and 
connected by a frail bridge with Goat Island, lay on 
my road. It was the scene of a very affecting accident 
in 1849. A gentleman from Buffalo had visited it 
along with his family and a young man of the name of 
Addington, and after looking over it, the party were 
about to leave the spot, when Addington, in his 
thoughtless spirits, suddenly took up one of the little 
children, a girl, in his arms, and held her over the edge 
of the bank, telling her that he was going to throw her 
in. The poor child, terrified, unfortunatly made a 
twist, and rolled out of his hands into the stream. 



The Falls of Niagara. 361 

Poor Addington, in a moment, with a loud cry of horror, 
sprang in to save her, but both, almost before the 
others at their side knew that anything of so fearful a 
kind had happened, were swept into the abyss 
beneath. Beyond Goat Island, a singularly daring 
structure has enabled visitors to cross to some scatter- 
ed masses of rock on the very brink of the Great Fall. 
A tower has been erected on them, and a slight bridge, 
which is always wet with the spray, has been stretched 
across to it. From this point the whole extent of the 
Falls is before you. It was an awful sight to look 
down on the rushing terrors at my feet. I felt confused, 
overwhelmed, and almost stunned. Once after, on 
another visit, I clambered out to it over the mounds of 
ice in winter, but I hardly know that the impression 
was deeper then. 

There are accidents every now and then at Niagara, 
but it is only wonderful that, amidst such dangers, 
there are no more. The truth is that # here, as well as 
elsewhere, familiarity breeds contempt. Thus, in 1854, 
a man ventured, with his son, to cross the rapids above 
the Falls, in a skiff, to save some property which hap- 
pened to be on a flat-bottomed ' scow,' which had 
broken from its moorings, and stuck fast at some 
distance above Goat Island. The two shot out into 
the broken water, and were carried with terrible swift- 
ness down towards the 'scow/ into which the son 
sprang as they shot past, fastening the skiff to it as he 
did so. Having taken off the goods they wished to 



362 The Falls of Niagara. 

save, the skiff, with both on board, was once more 
pushed off, and flew like an arrow on the foaming 
water, towards the Tliree Sisters — the name of some 
rocks above Goat Island. The fate of the two men 
seemed to be sealed, for they were nearing the centre 
Fall, and, to go over it, would be instant death. But 
they managed, when on its very verge, to push into 
an eddy, and reached the second Sister. On this, 
they landed, and having dragged ashore the skiff, car- 
ried it to the foot of the island, a proof that the 
' property' they wished to rescue could not have 
weighed very much. There, they once more launched 
it, and making a bold sweep down the rapids, their 
oars going with their utmost strength, they succeeded 
in reaching the shore of Goat Island in safety, though 
it seems to me as if, after thus tempting their fate, they 
hardly deserved to do so. 

I was very much struck by the appearance of the 
rapids above the Falls, on a visit I made to an island 
some distance up the river, in the very middle of them. 
A fine broad bridge, built by the owner of the island, 
and of the neighbouring shore, enables you to reach it 
with ease. It lies about half-way between Chippewa 
and the Falls, on the British side. The whole surface 
of the great stream is broken into a long cascade, each 
leap of which is made with more swiftness than the 
one before. It is a wild tumultuous scene, and forms 
a fit prelude to the spectacle to which it leads. Acci- 
dents occasionally happen here also. Just before I 



The Falls of Niagara. 363 

visited it, a little child had strayed from a party with 
whom she was, and must have fallen into the stream, 
as she was never seen again after being missed. 

Some years ago, a number of people in the neigh- 
bourhood formed the strange wish to see a boat laden 
with a variety of animals, go down these rapids and 
over the Falls. It was a cruel and idle curiosity which 
could dictate such a thought, but they managed to 
get money enough to purchase a bear and some other 
animals, which were duly launched, unpiloted, from 
the shore near Chippewa. From whatever instinctive 
sense of danger it would be impossible to say, the 
creatures appeared very soon to be alarmed. The 
bear jumped overboard on seeing the mist of the Falls, 
as the people on the spot say, and by great efforts, 
managed to swim across so far that he was carried 
down to Goat Island. The other animals likewise 
tried to escape, but in vain. The only living creatures 
that remained in the boat were some geese, which 
could not have escaped if they had wished, their wings 
having been cut short. They went over, and several 
were killed at once, though, curiously enough, some 
managed, by fluttering, to get beyond the crushing 
blow of the descending water, and reached the shore 
in safety. 



3 6 4 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

The suspension-bridge at Niagara — The whirlpool — The battle 
of Lundy's Lane — Brock's monument — A soldier nearly 
drowned. 

WO miles below the Falls an attraction 
presents itself now, that was not in exist- 
ence when I first visited them, though I 
have seen it often since ; the Great Sus- 
pension Bridge over the chasm through which the 
river flows below. Made entirely of iron wire, twisted 
into ropes and cables of all sizes, the largest measur- 
ing ten inches through, and containing about four 
thousand miles of wire, it stretches in a road twenty- 
four feet in breadth, in two stories, the under one for 
foot passengers and carriages, the other, twenty-eight 
feet above it, for a steady stream of railway trains, at 
the height of two hundred and fifty feet over the deep 
rushing waters, for eight hundred feet, from the Cana- 
dian to the American shore. Two huge towers, rising 
nearly ninety feet on the American side, and nearly 
eighty on the British, bear up the vast fabric, which is 
firmly anchored in solid masonry built into the ground 
beyond. It is hard to believe what is nevertheless 



The Whirlpool. 365 

the fact, that the airy and elegant thing thus hanging 
over the gulf is by no means so light as it looks, but 
weighs fully eight hundred tons. When you step on 
it and feel it tremble beneath any passing waggon, the 
thought of trains going over it seems like sending 
them to certain destruction. Yet they do go, hour 
after hour, and have done so safely for years, the only 
precaution observed being to creep along at the slow- 
est walk. It is open at the sides — that is, you can 
see up and down the river, and over into the awful 
abyss, but my head is not steady enough to stand 
looking into such a depth. How Blondin could pass 
over on his rope has always been incomprehensible, to 
me ; the bridge itself was not broad enough for my 
nerves. Yet he performed his wonderful feat again 
and again, close by, and each time with accumulated 
difficulties, until, when the Prince of Wales visited 
Niagara, he actually carried over a man on his back 
from the Canadian to the American side, and came 
back on stilts a yard high, playing all kinds of antics 
by the way. 

Every one has heard of the whirlpool at the Falls, 
and most of the visitors go down the three miles to 
it. To be like others, I also strolled down, but I was 
greatly disappointed. I had formed in my mind a 
very highly-wrought picture of a terrible roaring 
vortex, flying round in foam, at the rate of a great 
many miles an hour ; but instead, I found a turn in 
the channel, which they told me was the whirlpool ; 



366 The Whirlpool. 

though, to my notion, it needed the name to be written 
over it to enable one to know what it was, like the 
badly-painted sign, on which the artist informed the 
passer-by, in large letters, ' This is a horse/ I dare 
say it would have whirled quite enough for my taste 
had I been in it, but from the brow of the chasm it 
seems to take things very leisurely • indeed, as if it 
were treacle, rather than water. There are stories 
about the strength of the current, however, that shows 
it to be greater than is apparent from a little distance. 
A deserter, some years ago, tried to get over below 
the Falls to the American side on no better convey- 
ance than a huge plank. But the stream was stronger 
than he had supposed ; and in spite of all his efforts, 
he w r as forced down to this circling horror, which 
speedily sent him and his plank round and round in 
gradually contracting whirls, until, after a time, they 
reached the centre. There was no pushing out, and 
the poor wretch was kept revolving, with each end of 
his support sunk in the vortex by turns, requiring him 
to crawl backwards and forwards unceasingly for more 
than a day, before means were found to bring him to 
land. Somebody said at the time that he would surely 
become an expert circumnavigator after such a training ; 
but his miraculous escape has most probably not induced 
many others to make the same venturesome voyage. 

The village of Drummondville, a little back from 
the Falls, on the British side, is memorable as the 
scene of the Battle of Lundy's Lane, in the war of 



A Sad Mistake. 367 

1812 — 1814. I was fortunate enough to meet with an 
intelligent man who, when a boy, had seen the battle 
from a distance ; and he went with me over the ground. 
In passing through a garden, in which a fine crop of 
Indian corn was waving, he stopped to tell me that 
on the evening after the battle, he saw a number of 
soldiers come to this spot, which was then an open 
field, and commence digging a great pit. Curious to 
know all they were doing, he went up and stood 
beside them, and found it was a grave for a number 
of poor fellows who had been shot by mistake in the 
darkness of the night before. An aide-de-camp had 
been sent off in hot haste down to Queenston from 
the battle, to order up reinforcements as quickly as 
possible, and had been obeyed so promptly that our 
forces on the field could not believe they had come 
when they heard them marching up the hill, but 
supposing they must be Americans, fired a volley of 
both cannon and musketry into their ranks. There 
they lie now, without any memorial, in a private 
garden, which is dug up every year, and replanted 
over their bones, as if there were no such wreck of 
brave hearts sleeping below. In the churchyard there 
were a number of tablets of wood, instead of stone, 
marking the graves of officers slain in the conflict. I 
picked up more than one which had rotted off at the 
ground, and were lying wherever the wind had carried 
them. Peach-trees, laden with fruit, hung over and 
amidst the graves, and sheep were nibbling the grass. 



368 The Seneca Indians. 

But what seemed the most vivid reminiscence of the 
strife was a wooden house, to which my guide led me, 
the sides and ends of which were perforated with a great 
number of holes made on the day by musket-balls ; a 
larger hole here and there, showing where a cannon 
had also sent its missile through it. I was surprised to 
see it inhabited with so many apertures unstopped out- 
side \ but perhaps it was plastered within. 

Every part of the Niagara frontier has," indeed, its 
own story of war and death. On the way to Queens- 
ton I passed a gloomy chasm, into which the waters 
of a small stream, called the Bloody Run, fall, on their 
course to the river. It got its name from an incident 
in the old French war, very characteristic of the times 
and the country. A detachment of British troops 
was marching up the banks of the Niagara with a 
convoy of waggons, and had reached this point, when 
a band of Seneca Indians, in the service of the French, 
leaped out from the woods immediately over the pre- 
cipice, and uttering from all sides their terrible war- 
whoop, rushed down, pouring in a deadly volley as 
they closed, and hurled them and all they had, soldiers, 
waggons, horses, and drivers, over the cliff into the 
abyss below, where they were dashed to pieces on the 
rocks. It was the work almost of a moment; they 
were gone before they could collect themselves to- 
gether, or realize their position. The little stream was 
red with their blood, and out of the whole number 
only two escaped — the one a soldier, who, as by 



Brock's Monument. 369 

miracle, got back, under cover of night, to Fort Ni- 
agara, at the edge of Lake Ontario ; the other a gentle- 
man, who spurred his horse through the horde of savages 
on the first moment of the alarm, and got off in 
safety. My attention was drawn, as I got farther on, 
to the monument of General Brock, killed at the 
battle of Queenston, in 181 2, which stands near the 
village of that name, on a fine height close to the 
edge of the river. It is a beautiful object when 
viewed from a distance, and no less so on a near 
approach, and is, I think, as yet, the only public 
monument in the western province. I had often 
heard it spoken of with admiration before I saw it, 
and could easily understand why it was so. I could 
not but feel that besides being a tribute to the memory 
of the illustrious dead, it served also to keep alive 
through successive generations an enthusiastic feeling 
of patriotism and of a resolute devotion to duty. 

Taking the steamer at Queenston, which is a, small, 
lifeless place, I now struck out on the waters of 
Ontario, to see Toronto once more. As we entered 
the lake, I was amused by the remark of an Irish lad, 
evidently fresh from his native island. Leaning close 
by me over the side of the vessel, he suddenly turned 
round from a deep musing, in which he had been 
absorbed, and, broke out — ( Och, sir ! what a dale o' 
fine land thim lakes cover ! ' Such a thought in a 
country where a boundless wilderness stretches so 

closely in one unbroken line, seemed inexpressibly 
24 



370 A Soldier nearly Drowned. 

ludicrous, not to speak of the uselessness of. all the 
land that was ' uncovered/ if there had been no lakes 
to facilitate passage from one point to another. As 
we left the wharf at the town of Niagara, which stands 
at the mouth of the river, on the lake, a great stir was 
caused for a short time by a soldier of the Rifles 
having been tumbled into the water, and nearly 
drowned, through the stupidity of a poor Connaught- 
man who was in charge of the plank by which those 
who were leaving the steamer, before she started, were 
to reach the shore. He was in such a breathless 
hurry and wild excitement, that he would hardly leave 
it in its place while the visitors were crowding out ; 
once and again he had made a snatch at it, only to 
have some one put his foot on it, and run off. At 
last the soldier came, but just as he made a step on it 
the fellow who had his face to the shore, and saw no- 
thing except the crowd, gave it a pull, and down went 
the man into the water, cutting his chin badly in fall- 
ing. He evidently could not swim, and sank almost 
at once, but he came up to find ropes thrown out to 
him to cling to. But somehow he could not catch 
them, and he would, in another moment, have gone 
down again. Luckily, however, some one had sense 
enough to thrust down a broad ladder, which was 
standing near, and up this he managed to climb, we 
holding the top steadily till he did so. Every 
attention was instantly paid him ; and I dare say the 
mishap did him no harm beyond the ducking. In a 



A Colonel's Kind?iess. 371 

few minutes he was ashore again ; and I was delighted 
to see the colonel, who happened to be present, give 
him his arm, and walk away with him, talking kindly 
to him as they went 



37* 




CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Canadian lakes — The exile's love of home — The coloured 
people in Canada — Rice — The Maid of the Mist — Home-spun 
cloth — A narrow road — A grumbler — New England emigrants 
— a potato-pit — The winter's wood. 

JHAT vast sheets of water the lakes of 
Canada are ! Beginning, in the far north- 
west, with Superior, nearly as large as all 
Scotland, we have Michigan, Huron, Erie, 
and Ontario, in succession, each more like a sea than 
a lake. On crossing them, you have no land in sight 
any more than on the ocean ; and, like it, they have 
whole fleets on them, all through the season of naviga- 
tion. They yield vast sums from their fisheries, and 
their waves wash shores as extensive as those of 
many kingdoms. It is striking how gigantic is the 
proportion of everything in nature in the New World. 
Vast lakes and rivers, the wonderful Niagara, end- 
less forests, and boundless prairies — all these form a 
great contrast to the aspects of nature in Europe. 
The chain of lakes, altogether, stretch over more 
than a thousand miles, with very short intervals 
between any of them, and none between some. 



The Exiles Love of Ho7ne. 373 

Even Ontario, which is the smallest, is nine times 
as long, and from twice to four times as broad, as the 
sea between Dover and Calais. I could not help 
thinking of the fact that there were men still living 
who remembered when the Indians had possession 
of nearly all the shore of Lake Ontario, and when 
only two or three of their wigwams stood on the 
site of the town to which I was then sailing. I 
found Toronto much increased since my first visit to 
it — its streets macadamized in some places, pave- 
ments of plank laid down on the sides of several, the 
houses better, and the shops more attractive. When 
we first came, it was as muddy a place as could be 
imagined; but a few years work wonders in a new 
country like Canada. There was now no fear of a 
lady losing her India-rubber overshoes in crossing 
the street, as one of my sisters had done on our first 
coming, nor were waggons to be seen stuck hard 
and fast in the very heart of the town. I found my 
married sister comfortably established, and spent 
a very pleasant time with her and her husband. 
There is, however, not much to see in Toronto even 
now, and still less at that time. It lies very low near 
the lake, though the ground rises as it recedes from 
; it. The neighbourhood is rather uninteresting, to 
my taste, from the tameness of the scenery. It is 
an English town, however, in its feelings and out- 
ward life, and that made it delightful. It is beau- 
tiful to see how true-hearted nearly every one be- 



374 Loyalty of the Canadians. 

comes to his mother-country when he has left it. 
There has often seemed to me to be more real love 
of Britain out of it than in it, as if it needed to be 
contemplated from a distance, in order thoroughly 
to appreciate all its claims upon our love and respect. 
In Canada almost every one is a busy local politician, 
deeply immersed in party squabbles and manoeuvres, 
and often separated by them from his neighbour. 
But let the magic name of ' home ' be mentioned, 
and the remembrance of the once-familiar land causes 
every other thought to be forgotten. In the time of 
the Rebellion in 1837, before we came out, it was 
found that although multitudes had talked wildly 
enough while things were all quiet, the moment it 
was proposed to rise against England, the British- 
born part of them, and many native Canadians as 
well, at once went over to the old flag, to defend 
it, if necessary, with their lives. And when it seemed 
as if England needed help in the time of the war with 
Russia, Canada came forward in a moment, of her 
own accord, and raised a regiment to aid in fighting 
her battles, and serve her in any part of the world. 
Later still, when the Prince of Wales went over, they 
gave him such a reception as showed their loyalty 
most nobly. Through the whole province it seemed 
as if the population were smitten with an universal 
enthusiasm, and despaired of exhibiting it sufficiently. 
And but yesterday, when rumours of war rose once 



The Colottred People. 375 

more, the whole people where kindled in a moment 
with a loyal zeal. 

I was very much struck, on this trip, with the 
number of coloured people who have found a refuge 
in Canada. In all the hotels, most of the waiters, 
and a large proportion of the cooks, seemed to be 
coloured. They take to these employments naturally, 
and never appear to feel themselves in greater glory 
than when fussing about the table at meals, or wield- 
ing the basting-ladle in the kitchen. They very 
seldom turn to trades, and even their children, as 
they grow up, are not much more inclined to them. I 
used to think it was, perhaps, because, as slaves, they 
might not have learned trades, but this would not 
apply to those born in Canada, who might learn them 
if they liked. They become, instead, whitewashers, 
barbers, or waiters, and cooks, like their fathers before 
them. I was told, however, that they are a well-con- 
ducted set of people, rarely committing any crimes, 
and very temperate. They have places of worship of 
their own, and I was amused by a friend telling us, 
one night, how he had met their minister going home, 
carrying a piece of raw beef at his side by a string, and 
how, when he had one evening gone to their chapel, 
the official, a coloured man, had told him that ' the 
folks had tu'ned out raither lean in the mo'nin, and, 
'sides, the wood's sho't — so I guess we sha'n't open 
to-night/ Poor, simple creatures, it is, indeed, a grand 



376 Hamilton. 

thing that there is a home open for them like Canada, 
where they can have the full enjoyment of liberty. 
Long may the red cross of St George wave an invita- 
tion to their persecuted race to come and find a refuge 
under its shadow ! 

I went home again by way of Hamilton, to which 
I crossed in a steamer. The white houses, peeping 
through the woods, were a pretty sight at the places 
where we stopped, the larger ones standing on all 
sides, detached, in the midst of pleasant grass and 
trees ; the others, in the villages, built with an easy 
variety of shape and size that could hardly be seen 
in an older country. The tin spires of churches 
rose, every here and there, brightly through the 
trees; reminding one that the faith of his dear native 
land had not been forgotten, but was cherished as 
fondly in the lonely wilderness as it had been at 
home. Hamilton, the only town of Canada West 
with a hill near it, gave me a day's pleasure in a 
visit to a friend, and a ramble over ' the mountain/ 
as they called the ridge behind it. The sight of streets 
built of stone, instead of wood, or brick, was posi- 
tively delightful, bringing one in mind of the stability 
of an older country. £ Have you ever seen any of 
this?' said my friend, when we were back in his 
room, and he handed me a grain different from 
any I had ever noticed before. I said I had not. 
It was rice \ got from Rice Lake when he was down 
there lately. The lake lies a little north of Cobourg, 



Lake Rice. 377 

which is seventy miles or so below Toronto. He was 
very much pleased with his trip. The road to it lies, 
after leaving Cobourg, through a fine farming country 
fbr some distance, and then you get on what the 
folks call ' the plains ' — great reaches of sandy soil, 
covered with low, scrubby oak bushes, thick with 
filberts. As you get to the lake, the view is really 
beautiful, while the leaves are out. The road stretches 
on through avenues of green, and, at last, when you 
get nearer, there are charming peeps of the water 
through a fringe of beautiful trees, and over and 
through a world of creepers, and vines, and bushes of 
all sorts. The rice grows only in the shallow borders 
of the lake, rising in beds along the shore, from the 
deep mud, in which it takes root. It looks curious to 
see grain in the middle of water. The Indians have 
it left to them as a perquisite, and they come when it 
gets ripe, and gather it in their canoes, sailing along 
and bending down the ears over the edges of their 
frail vessels, and beating out the rice as they do so. 
They get a good deal of shooting as well as rice, for 
the ducks and wild fowl are as fond of the ears as 
themselves, and flock in great numbers to get a share 
of them. There are great beds along the shores of the 
Georgian Bay, on Lake Huron, as well as on Rice 
Lake, but there also it is left to the Indians. 

Of course I was full of my recent visit to the Falls, 
and dosed my friend with all the details which occur- 
red to me. He had noticed, like me, how the 



378 The ' Maid of the Mist: 

windows rattle unceasingly in the neighbourhood, 
from the concussion of the air, and told me of a cu- 
rious consequence of the dampness, from the minute 
powdery spray that floats far in every direction ;— 
that they could not keep a piano from warping and 
getting out of tune, even as far as a mile from the 
Falls, near the river's edge. The glorious sunrise I 
had seen from Drummondville came back again to 
my thoughts ; how, on rising early one morning, the 
great cloud at the Falls, and the long swathe of vapour 
that lay over the chasm for miles below, had been 
changed into gold by the light, and shone like the 
gates of heaven \ and I remembered how I had been 
struck with a great purple vine near the river's edge, 
which, after climbing a lofty elm that had been struck 
and withered by lightning, flung its arms, waving far, 
into the air. ' Did you see the Maid of the Mist ? ' 
he asked. Of course I had, and we talked of it ; how 
the little steamer plies, many times a day, from the 
landing-places, close up to the Falls, going sometimes 
s.o near that you stand on the bank, far above, in 
anxious excitement lest it should be sucked into the 
cauldron and perish at once. I have stood thus 
wondering if the paddles would ever get her out of 
the white foam into which she had pressed, and it 
seemed as if, though they were doing their utmost, it 
was a terrible time before they gained their point. If 
any accident were to happen to the machinery, woe to 
those on board ! As it is, they get drenched, in spite 



Homespun Cloth. 379 

of oil-skin dresses, and must be heartily glad when 
they reach firm footing once more. 

I was sorry when I had to leave and turn my face 
• once more towards home. As the stage drove on, the 
roads being still in their best condition, I had leisure 
to notice everything. The quantity of homespun gray 
woollen cloth, worn by the farmers and country people, 
was very much greater than I had seen it in previous 
years, and was in admirable keeping with the country 
around. The wives and daughters in the farmhouses 
have a good deal to do in its manufacture. The wool 
is taken to the mill to get cleaned, a certain weight being 
kept back from each lot in payment ; then the snowy- 
white fleece is twisted into rolls, and in that condition 
it is taken back by its owners to be spun into yarn at 
home. I like the hum of the spinning-wheel amazingly, 
and have often waited to look at some tidy girl, walk- 
ing backwards and forwards at her task, at each 
approach sending off another hum, as she drives the 
wheel round once more. But the cloth is not made at 
home. The mill gets the yarn when finished, and 
weaves it into the homely useful fabric I saw every 
where around. At one place we had an awkward 
stoppage on a piece of narrow corduroy road. There 
happened to be a turn in it, so that the one end could 
not be seen from the other, and we had got on some 
distance, bumping dreadfully from log to log, when a 
waggon made its appearance coming towards us. It 
could not pass and it could not turn, and there was water 



380 A Grumbling Scotchman. 

at both sides. What was to be done ? It was a great 
question for the two drivers. Their tongues went at a 
great rate at each other for a while, but, after a time, 
they cooled down enough to discuss the situation, as 
two statesmen would the threatened collision of empires. 
They finally solved the difficulty by unyoking the 
horses from the waggon, and pushing it back over the 
logs with infinite trouble, after taking out as much of 
the load as was necessary. Of course the passengers 
helped with right goodwill, turning the wheels, and 
straining this way and that, till the road was clear, 
when we drove on once more. The bridge at Brant- 
ford, when we reached it, was broken down, having 
remained so since the last spring floods, when it had 
been swept away by the ice and water together, and 
the coach had to get through the stream as well as it 
could. The horses behaved well, the vehicle itself 
slipped and bumped over and against the stones at the 
bottom ; but it got a cleaning that it very much 
needed, and neither it nor we took any harm. A great 
lumpish farmer, who travelled with me, helped to pass 
the time by his curious notions and wonderful power 
of grumbling. A person beside him, who appeared to 
know his ways, dragged him into conversation, whether 
he would or not. He maintained there was nothing in 
Canada like what he had seen in Scotland ; his wheat 
had been destroyed by the midge, year after year, or 
by the rust ; his potatoes, he averred, had never done 
well, and everything else had been alike miserable. 



An Irish Labourer. 381 

At last he seemed to have got through his lamentations, 
and his neighbour struck in — ' Well, at any rate, Mr 
M'Craw, you can't say but your turnips are first-rate 
this year ; why one of them will fill a bucket when you 
cut it up for the cattle/ But Mr M'Craw was not to be 
beaten, and had a ready answer. ' They're far owre 
guid — I'll never be fit to use them — the half o' them 'ill 
rot in the grund, if they dinna choke the puir kye wi' 
the size o' them.' The whole of us laughed, but Mr 
M'Craw only shook his head. As we were trotting 
along we overtook an Irishman — a labouring man — 
and were hailed by him as we passed. ' Will ye take 
us to Ingersoll for a quarter (an English shilling) ? ' 
The driver pulled up — made sSome objections, but at 
last consented, and Paddy instantly pulled out his 
money, and reached it into the hand which was 
stretched down to receive it. 'Jump in, now — quick.' 
But, indeed, he needn't have said it, he was only too 
anxious to do so. The coach window was down, and 
the pane being large, a good-sized opening was left, 
In a moment Pat was on the step below; the next 
first one leg came through the window-frame, amidst 
our unlimited laughter ; then the body tried to follow, 
but this was no easy business. i Wait a minit. I'll be 
thro' in a minit,' he shouted to us. ' Get out, man, do 
ye no ken the use o' a door ? ' urged Mr M'Craw. But 
in the mean time Pat had crushed himself through, in 
some way, and had landed in an extraordinary fashion, 
as gently as he could, across our knees. We soon got 



382 A Gentleman and his Dog. 

him into his seat, but it was long before we ceased 
laughing at the adventure. He could never have 
been in a coach in his life before. I saw a misfortune 
happen in an omnibus some years after, on the way- 
down to Toronto from the North, which was the only 
thing to be compared to it for its effect on the risible 
powers of the spectators. A gentleman travelling 
with me then, had a favourite dog with him, which he 
was very much afraid he might lose, but which the 
driver would not allow him to take inside. At every 
stoppage the first thought of both man and beast 
seemed the same, to see if all was right with the other. 
The back of the omnibus was low, and the dog was 
eager to get in, but he and his master could only con- 
fer with each other from opposite sides of the door. 
At last, as we got near the town we came to a halt 
once more. The gentleman was all anxiety about 
his dog. For the fiftieth time he put his head 
to the window to see if everything was right. But 
it happened that, just as he did so, the dog was in 
full flight for the same opening, having summoned 
up all his strength for a terrible jump through the only 
entrance, and reached it at the same moment as his 
master's face, against which he came with a force 
which sent himself back to the ground and sorely dis- 
turbed his owner's composure. It was lucky the 
animal was not very large, else it might have done 
serious damage ; as it was, an astounding shock was 
the only apparent result. It was a pity he was hurt 



New England Emigrants. 383 

at all, but the thought of blocking off the dog with 
his face, as you do a cricket ball with a bat, and the 
sublime astonishment of both dog and man at the colli- 
sion, were irresistibly ludicrous. 

On our way from London to Lake Huron we came 
on a curious sight at the side of the road — a New 
England family, on their way from Vermont to Michi- 
gan, travelling, and living, in a waggon, like the Scy- 
thians of old. The waggon was of comparatively slight 
construction, and was arched over with a white canvas 
roof, so as to serve for a conveyance by day and a 
bed-room by night, though it must have been hard 
work to get a man and his wife, and some children, all 
duly stretched out at full length, packed into it. Some 
of them, I suppose, took advantage of wayside inns 
for their nightly lodging. A thin pipe, projecting at 
the back, showed that they had a small stove with 
them, to cook their meals. Two cows were slowly 
walking behind, the man himself driving them \ and a 
tin pail, hanging on the front of the waggon, spoke of 
part of their milk being in the process of churning into 
butter by the shaking on the way. They were very 
respectable-looking people — as nearly all New Eng- 
landers are — and had, no doubt, sold off their property, 
whatever it might have been, in their native State, to go 
in search of a new ' location/ as they call it — that is, 
a fresh settlement in the Far West, with the praises of 
which, at that time, the country was full. It must 
have taken them a very long time to get so far at such 



3 84 New England Emigrants. 

a snail's pace ; but time would eventually take a snail 
round the world, if it had enough of it, and they 
seemed to lay no stress whatever on the rate of their 
progress. They had two horses, two cows, and the 
waggon, to take with them, until they should reach 
their new neighbourhood ; and to accomplish that was 
worth some delay. One of my fellow-travellers told 
me that such waggon-loads were then an e very-day 
sight on the road past Brantford; and, indeed, I can 
easily believe it Michigan was then a garden of 
Eden, according to popular report; but it was not 
long in losing its fame, which passed to Wisconsin, 
and from that, has passed to other States or territories 
since. The New England folks are as much given to 
leaving their own country as any people, and much 
more than most. Their own States are too poor to 
keep them well at home; and they have energy, 
shrewdness, and very often high principle, which make 
them welcome in any place where they may choose to 
settle in preference. I know parts in some of the New 
England States where there are hardly any young 
men or young women ; they have left for the towns 
and cities more or less remote, where they can best 
push their fortunes. It is the same very much in 
Nova Scotia, and, indeed, must be so with all poor 
countries. 

I was very glad, when I got home, to find all my 
circle quite well, and had a busy time of it for a good 
while, telling them all I had seen and heard. They 



A Potato Pit. 385 

were busy with their fall-work — getting the potatoes 
and turnips put into pits, to keep them from the frost 
when it should set in, and getting ready a great stock 
of firewood. Our pit was a curious affair, which I 
should have mentioned earlier, since we made it in 
the second fall we were on the river. We dug a great 
hole like a grave, many feet deep, large enough to 
hold a hundred bushels of potatoes, and I don't know 
what besides. The bottom of this excavation was 
then strewed with loose boards, and the sides were 
walled round with logs, set up side by side, to keep 
the earth from falling in. On the top, instead of a 
roof, we laid a floor of similar logs, close together, 
and on this we heaped up earth to the thickness of 
about three feet, to keep out the cold, however severe 
it might be. The entrance was at one end, down a 
short ladder, which brought you to a door, roughly 
fitted in. The first year it was made, we paid for 
imperfect acquaintance with such things by bringing a 
heavy loss on ourselves. We had put in eighty. 
bushels of potatoes, and, to keep out the least trace 
of frost, filled up the hole where the ladder was with 
earth. But in the spring when we opened the pit to 
get out our seed, we found the whole heap to be 
worthless. I remember the day very well ; it was 
very bright and beautiful, and we were all in high 
spirits. The earth was removed from the ladder end 
in a very short time, and young Grahame, one of a 
neighbour's boys, asked leave to go in first, and bring 
25 



386 The Winters Wood. 

out the first basketful. Down he leaped, pulled open 
the door, and crept in. We waited a minute, but 
there was no sign of his coming out again. We 
called to him but got no answer ; and at last I 
jumped down to find the poor little fellow overpowered 
from the effects of the carbonic acid gas, with which 
the pit was filled. *?*The earth at the ladder end had 
entirely prevented the necessary ventilation, and the 
potatoes had ' heated/ ; and had become perfectly 
rotten. We managed better after this by putting 
straw instead of earth into the opening ; but the 
right plan would have been to sink a small hollow 
tube of wood — a slender piece of some young tree, 
with the middle scooped out, through the top, to 
serve as a ventilator. It was a great loss to us, as 
the potatoes were then at the unusual price of a dollar 
a bushel, and eighty dollars were to us, at that time, 
a small fortune. 

The laying in the winter's wood was a tedious 
affair ; it was cut in the fall, and -part of it dragged 
by the oxen to the house in the shape of long logs ; 
but we left the greater part of the drawing till the 
snow came. It was a nasty job to cut off each day 
what would serve the kitchen, and keep the fires 
brisk; and I sometimes even yet feel a twinge of 
conscience at the way I used to dole out a fixed num- 
ber of pieces to my sisters, keeping it as small as 
possible, and much smaller than it should have been. 
I was willing enough to work at most things, and 



Chopping Firewood. 387 

can't blame myself for being lazy ; but to get up from 
the warm fire on a cold morning to chop firewood, 
was freezing work; though this should certainly not 
have kept me from cutting a few more sticks, after all. 
I am afraid we are too apt to be selfish in these trifles, 
even when we are the very reverse in things of more 
moment. If I had the chance, now I am older, I 
think I would atone for my stinginess, cost me what 
freezing it might. 



3 88 




CHAPTER XXV. 

Thoughts for the future— Changes— Too -hard study— Education 
in Canada — Christmas markets — Winter amusements — Ice- 
boats — Very cold ice— Oil-springs— Changes on the farm — 
Growth of Canada— The American climate — Old England 
again. 

|HEN we had been five years on the farm, 
and Henry, and I, and the girls, were now 
getting to be men and women, the ques- 
tion of what we should do to get started 
in the world, became more and more pressing. 
Robert wished to get married ; Henry and I, and the 
two girls, all alike, wanted to be off; and the farm was 
clearly unfit to support more than one household. It 
took a long time for us to come to any conclusion, but 
at last we decided that Robert should have the land, 
that the girls should be sent for a time to a school 
down the country, and Henry and I should go to To- 
ronto, he to study medicine, and I law. Of course, 
all this could not be managed at once, but it was 
greatly facilitated by remittances from my brothers in 
England, who undertook by far the larger proportion 
of the cost. I confess I felt more sorrow at leaving 
the old place than I had expected, though it was still 



Too-hard Study. 389 

for years to be my home whenever I got free for a 
time; and it was long before I could get fairly into 
Blackstone, and Chitty, and Smith. Had I known 
how my life would ultimately turn, I don't think I 
should ever have troubled them, for here I am now, 
my law laid aside, snugly in England again, a partner 
in the mercantile establishment of my brothers, who 
had continued at home. I did not like the law in its 
every-day details of business, though all must recog- 
nize the majesty of the great principles on which the 
whole fabric rests ; and I got tired utterly of the 
country, at last, perhaps from failing health, for I bent 
with too much zeal to my studies when I once began. 
The chance of leaving Canada for my native land was 
thus unspeakably pleasing; and it has rewarded the 
gratitude with which I once more reached it, by giving 
me back a good part of the strength I had lost 
When I look back on the years I spent over my books, 
and remember how I presumed on my youth, and 
tasked myself, night and day, to continuous work, it 
seems as if my folly had only been matched by my 
guilt. To undermine our health is to trifle with all 
our advantages at once. Honest, earnest work, is all 
well enough, and nobody can ever be anything without 
it, but if there be too much of it, it defeats its own 
object, and leaves him who has overtaxed himself 
behind those who have made a more discreet use of 
their strength. I would gladly give half of what I 
learned by all my years of close study, for some of the 



39° Too-hard Study. 

y 

health I lost in acquiring it. Indeed, I question if I 
gained more, after all, by fagging on with a wearied 
body and mind, than I would, if I had taken proper 
relaxation and amusement, and returned fresh and vigor- 
rous to my books. The Genoese archers lost the 
battle of Cressy by a shower falling on their bow- 
strings, while those on our side gained it by having 
had their weapons safely in cases till the clouds were 
past. So, no doubt, it should be in our management 
of those powers within, on which our success in stu- 
dent life depends — let them be safely shielded betimes^ 
and they will be fresh for action when others are re- 
laxed and useless. How much time is spent when the 
mind is wearied, without our being able to retain any- 
thing of w r hat we read ! How often have I closed my 
book, at last, with the feeling, that, really, it might as 
well have been shut long before. I read in the office, 
and out of it, whenever I had a chance ; had some 
book or other on the table at my meals ; kept rigidly 
from visiting friends, that I might economize every 
moment ; poked my fire, and lighted a fresh candle at 
midnight, and gained some knowledge, indeed, but at 
the cost of white, or rather yellow cheeks — a stoop 
of the shoulders, and a hollow chest — cold feet, I fear, 
for life, and a stomach so weak that I am seldom 
without a memento of my folly in the pain it gives 
me. An hour or two in the open air every day would 
have saved me all these abatements, and would have 



Education in Canada. 391 

quickened my powers of work so as more than to 
make up for their being indulged in a little play. 

Since my day, great facilities have been afforded 
in Canada for education. There are now grammar- 
schools, with very moderate fees, in every part of the 
country, and a lad or young man can very easily get 
a scholarship which takes him free through the Uni- 
versity at Toronto.* Every county has one or more 
to give away each year. There is thus every chance 
for those who wish to rise, and Canada will no doubt 
show some notable results from the facility she has 
liberally provided for the encouragement of native 
genius and talent. 

My being for a length of time in a town showed 
me new features of our colonial life which I should 
in vain have looked for in the country. In many 
respects I might easily have forgotten I was in Canada 
at all, for you might as well speak of getting a correct 
idea of England from living in a provincial town, as 
of Canada by living in the streets of Toronto. The 
dress of the people is much the same as in Britain. 
Hats and light overcoats are not entirely laid aside 
even in winter, though fur caps and gauntlets, after 
all, are much more common. The ladies sweep along 

* The University has been long established, but since I at- 
tended its classes, it has been put on a more liberal basis — the 
number of chairs enlarged, and facilities for obtaining its ad-; 
vantages greatly increased. 



392 Christmas Markets. 

with more show than in England, as if they dressed 
for out-of-door display especially; but they are, no 
doubt, tempted to this by the clearness and dryness 
of the air, which neither soils nor injures fine things, 
as the coal-dust and the dampness do in English 
towns. The most plainly-dressed ladies I used to see 
were the wife and daughters of the Governor-general. 

The markets at Christmas were usually a greater 
attraction to many people than they used to be in 
England. If the weather chanced to be cold, you 
would see huge files of frozen pigs standing on their 
four legs in front of the stalls, as if they had been 
killed when at a gallop ; countless sheep hung over- 
head, with here and there one of their heads carefully 
gilded, to add splendour to the exhibition. Some 
deer were almost always to be noticed at some of the 
stalls, and it was not unusual to see the carcase of a 
bear contributing its part to the general show. As 
to the oxen, they were too fat for my taste, though 
the butchers seem to be proud of them in proportion 
to their obesity. The market was not confined to a 
special building, though there was one for the purpose. 
Long ranges of farmers' waggons, ranged at each side 
of it, showed similar treasures of frozen pork and 
mutton, the animals standing entire at the feet of their 
owners, who sat among them waiting for purchasers. 
Fiozen geese, ducks, chickens, and turkeys abounded, 
and that household was very poor indeed which had 
not one or other to grace the festival. 



Winter Amitsemcnts. 393 

Winter was a great time for amusement to the 
townspeople, from the nearness of the broad bay which 
in summer forms their harbour, and, after the frost, 
their place of recreation. It was generally turned into 
a great sheet of ice across its whole breadth of two 
miles, some time about Christmas, and continued like 
rock till the middle of April. As long as there were 
no heavy falls of snow to bury it, or after they had 
been blown off by the wind, the skating was universal. 
Boys and men alike gave way to the passion for it. 
The ice was covered with one restless throng from 
morning to night. School-boys made for it as soon as 
they got free ; the clerks and shopmen were down the 
instant the shutters were up and the doors fastened ; 
even ladies crowded to it, either to skate with the 
assistance of some gentlemen, or to see the crowd, or 
to be pushed along in chairs mounted on runners. 
The games of different kinds played between large 
numbers were very exciting. Scotchmen with their 
' curling,' others with balls, battering them hither and 
thither, in desperate efforts to carry them to a par- 
ticular boundary. Then there were the ice-boats 
gliding along in every direction, with their loads of 
well-dressed people reclining on them, and their huge 
sail swelling overhead. These contrivances were new 
to me, though I had been so long in Canada. They 
consist of a three-cornered frame of wood, large 
enough to give room for five or six people lying down 
or sitting on them, the upper side boarded over, and 



394 The Ice-trade of Toronto. 

the lower shod on each angle with an iron runner. A 
mast and sail near the sharp point which goes fore- 
most furnish the means of propulsion. The two 
longest runners are fixed, but the short one at the 
back is worked by a helm, the steersman having ab- 
solute control of the machine by its aid, and keeping 
within reach the cleats of the sail, that he may loosen 
or tighten it as he sees necessary. Many of the lads 
about were very skilful in managing them, and would 
sail as close to the wind, and veer and tack, as if they 
were in an ordinary boat in the water, instead of an 
oddly-shaped sleigh on ice. A very little wind suf- 
ficed to drive them at a good speed if the ice was 
good, and there was a good deal of excitement in 
watching the cracks and airholes as you rushed over 
them. I have seen them sometimes going with great 
rapidity. They say, indeed, that occasionally they 
cross the harbour in less than four minutes — a rate of 
speed equal to nearly thirty miles an hour. 

The ice-trade of Toronto is a considerable branch 
of industry during the winter, and gangs of men are 
employed for weeks together sawing out great blocks 
about two feet square from the parts of the bay where 
it is clearest and best for use. These are lifted by 
poles furnished with iron hooks, into carts, and taken 
to houses specially prepared for keeping them through 
the hot weather of the following summer. An ordi- 
nary wooden frame building is lined inside with a 
wall all round, at from two to three feet from the outer 



Spring Ice. 395 

one, and the space between is filled with waste tan 
bark rammed close, to keep out the heat when it 
comes. In this wintry shelter the cubes of ice are 
built up in solid masses, and, when full, the whole is 
finally protected by double doors, with a large quan- 
tity of straw between them. In the hot months you 
may see light carts with cotton coverings stretched 
over them in every street, carrying round the con- 
tents — now r broken into more saleable pieces — the 
words ' Spring Ice ' on each side of the white roof 
inviting the housekeepers to supply themselves. In 
hotels, private dwellings, railway carriages, steamers, 
and indeed everywhere, drinking-water in summer is 
invariably cooled by lumps of this gelid luxury, and 
not a few who take some of the one finish by suck- 
ing and swallowing some of the other. I saw an 
advertisement lately in a New Orleans paper begging 
the visitors at hotels not to eat the ice in the water- 
jugs this season, as, from the war having cut off the 
supply from the North, it was very scarce. At table, 
in most houses, the butter is regularly surmounted 
by a piece of ice, and it seems a regular practice with 
some persons at hotels and on steamers to show their 
breeding and selfishness by knocking aside this useful 
ornament, and taking the piece which it covered, as 
the coolest and hardest, leaving the others to put it up 
again if they like. 

Boiling water never gets hotter than two hundred 
and twelve degrees, because at that heat it flies off in 



39^ Canadian Ice. 

steam, but ice may be made a great deal colder than 
it is when it first freezes. English ice is pretty cold, 
but it never gets far below thirty-two degrees, which 
is the freezing-point. Canadian ice, on the other 
hand, is as much colder as the air of Canada, in which 
it is formed, is than that of England. Thus there is 
much more cold in a piece of ice, of a given size, 
from the one country, than in a piece of similar size 
from the other, and where cold is wished to be pro- 
duced, as it is in all drinks in summer in hot .climates, 
Canadian ice is, of course, much more valuable than 
any warmer kind would be. The Americans have 
long ago thought of this, and have created a great 
trade in their ice, which is about as cold as that of 
Canada, taking it in ships prepared very much as the 
ice-houses are, to India, and many other countries, 
where it is sold often at a great profit. You read of 
the ice crop as you would hear farmers speak of their 
crop of wheat or potatoes. They have not got so 
far as this that I know of in Canada, but if Boston 
ice can command a good price in Calcutta or Madras, 
that of the Lower St Lawrence should be able to 
drive it out of the market, for it is very much colder. 
A few inches of it are like a concentrated portable 
winter. 

In the fine farms round Toronto a great many 
fields are without any stumps, sometimes from their 
having been cleared so long that the stumps have 
rotted out, and sometimes by their having been pulled 



Oil Springs. 397 

out bodily as you would an old tooth, by a stump 
machine. It is a simple enough contrivance. A 
great screw is raised over the stump on a strong frame 
of wood which is made to enclose it; some iron 
grapnels are fastened into it on different sides, and a 
long pole put sticking out at one side for a horse, and 
then — after some twists — away it goes, with far more 
ease than would be thought possible. The outlying 
roots have, of course, to be cut away first, and a good 
deal of digging done, to let the screw and the horse, 
or horses, have every chance, but it is a much more 
expeditious plan than any other known in Canada, 
and must be a great comfort to the farmer by letting 
him plough and harrow without going round a wilder- 
ness of stumps in each field. 

A singular discovery has been made of late years 
about ten miles behind Robert's farm in Bidport, of 
wells yielding a constant supply of petroleum, or rock 
oil, instead of water. The quantity obtained is 
enormous, and as the oil is of a very fine quality and 
fit for most ordinary purposes, it is of great value. 
Strangely enough, not only in Canada, but also in the 
States, the same unlooked-for source has been found, 
at about the same time, supplying the same kind of oil. 
The ' wells ' of Pennsylvania are amazingly productive. 
I have been assured that there is a small river in one 
of the townships of that State, called Oil Creek, which 
is constantly covered with a thick coat of oil, from the 
quantity that oozes from each side of the banks. The 



398 Oil Springs. 

whole soil around is saturated with it, and this, with the 
necessity of fording the water, has destroyed a great 
many valuable horses, which are found to get inflamed 
and useless in the legs by the irritation the oil causes. 
Wells are sunk in every part of the neighbourhood, 
each of which spouts up oil as an artesian well does 
water, and that to such an amazing extent that, from 
some of them, hundreds of barrels, it is affirmed, have 
been filled in a day. Indeed, there is one well, which 
is known by the name of t The Brawley,' which, if we 
can believe the accounts given, in sixty days spouted 
out thirty-three thousand barrels of oil, and some 
others are alleged to have yielded more than two 
thousand barrels in twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, 
preparations had not, in most cases, been made for 
catching this extraordinary quantity, so that a great 
proportion of it ran off and was lost. The depth of 
the wells varies. Some are close to the surface, but 
those which yield most are from five to eight hundred 
feet deep, and, there, seem to reach a vast lake of oil 
which is to all appearance inexhaustible. They 
manage to save the whole produce now by lining the 
wells, which are mere holes about six inches in 
diameter, for some depth with copper sheathing, and 
putting a small pipe with stop-cocks in at the top, 
which enables them to control the flow as easily as 
they do that of water. If we think of the vast quan- 
tities of coal stored up in different parts, it will dimin- 



Oil Springs. 399 

ish our astonishment at the discovery of these huge 
reservoirs of oil, for both seem to have the same 
source, from the vast beds of vegetation of the early 
eras of the globe ; if, indeed, the oil do not often rise 
from decomposition of coal itself, for it occurs chiefly 
in the coal measures. We shall no doubt have full 
scientific accounts of them, after a time, and as they 
become familiar we will lose the feeling of wonder 
which they raised at first. Except to the few who are 
thoughtful, nothing that is not new and strange seems 
worthy of notice ; but, if we consider aright, what is 
wonderful in itself is no less so because we have be- 
come accustomed to it. It is one great difference be- 
tween a rude and a cultivated mind, that the one has 
only a gaping wonder at passing events or discoveries, 
while the other seeks to find novelty in what is already 
familiar. The one looks only at a result before him, 
the other tries to find out causes. The one only 
looks at things as a whole, the other dwells on details 
and examines the minutest parts. The one finds food 
for his curiosity in his first impressions, and when 
these fade, turns aside without any further interest; 
the other discovers wonders in things the most com- 
mon, insignificant, or apparently worthless. Science 
got the beautiful metal — aluminium — out of the clay 
which ignorance trod under foot; through Sir Hum 
phrey Davy it got iodine out of the scrapings of 
soap-kettles which the soap-boilers bad always thrown 



4co Changes on the Farm. 

out, and it extracts the beautiful dyes we call Magenta 
and Solferino, from coal-tar which used to be a worth- 
less nuisance near every gas-house. 

My brother Robert's farm, when I last saw it, was 
very different from my first recollections of it. He 
has had a nice little brick house built, and frame 
barns have taken the place of the old log ones that 
served us long ago. After our leaving he commenced 
a new orchard of the best trees he could get — a 
nursery established sixty miles off down the river 
supplying the young trees of the best kinds cheaply. 
They have flourished, and must by this time be 
getting quite broad and venerable. He has some good 
horses, a nice gig for summer, with a leather cover to 
keep off the sun or the storm, and a sleigh for winter, 
with a very handsome set of furs. Most of the land 
is cleared, and he is able to keep a man all the time, 
so that he has not the hard work he once had. His 
fences are new and good, and the whole place looked 
very pleasant in summer. All this progress, however, 
has not been made from the profits of the farm. A 
little money left by a relative to each of us gave him 
some capital, and with it he opened a small store on 
his lot in a little house built for the purpose. There 
was no pretence of keeping shop, but when a customer 
came he called at the house, and any one who happened 
to be at hand went with him and unlocked the door, 
opened the shutter and supplied him, locking all 



Growth of Canada. 401 

safely again when he was gone. In this primitive way 
he has made enough to keep him very comfortably 
with his family, the land providing most of what they 
eat. They have a school within a mile of them, but 
it is rather a humble one, and there is a clergyman for 
the church at the wharf two miles down. Henry 
established himself in a little village when he first got 
his degree, but was thought so much of by his profess- 
ors that he has been asked to take the chair of sur- 
gery, which he now holds. My two sisters, Margaret 
and Eliza, both married, but only the former is now 
living, the other having been dead for some years. 
Margaret is married to a worthy Presbyterian minister, 
and, if not rich, is, at least, comfortable, in the plain 
way familiar in Canada. 

When we first went to Canada no more was meant 
by that name than the strip of country along the St 
Lawrence, in the Lower Province, and, in the Upper, 
the peninsula which is bounded by the great lakes — 
Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Since then, however, the 
discovery of gold in California and Fraser's River has 
given a wider range to men's thoughts, and awakened 
an ambition in the settled districts to claim as their 
domain the vast regions of British America, stretching 
away west to the shores of the Pacific, and north to 
the Arctic Ocean. I used to think all this vast tract 
only fit for the wild animals to which it was for the 
most part left, but there is nothing like a little know- 
26 



402 The American Climate. 

ledge for changing mere prejudice. There is of course 
a part of it which is irredeemably desolate, but there are 
immense reaches which will, certainly, some day, be 
more highly valued than they are now. The nearly 
untouched line on the north of Lake Huron has been 
found to be rich in mines of copper. The Red River 
district produces magnificent wheat. The River 
Saskatchewan, flowing in two great branches from the 
west and north-west to Lake Winnepeg, drains a 
country more than six times as large as the whole of 
England and Wales, and everywhere showing the 
most glorious woods and prairies, w T hich are proofs of 
its wealth as an agricultural region. The Mackenzie 
River drains another part of the territory eight times 
as large as England and Wales together, and the 
lower parts of it, at least, have a climate which pro- 
mises comfort and plenty. It is no less than two 
thousand five hundred miles in length, and is navigable 
by steamboats for twelve hundred miles from its mouth. 
It is a singular fact that the farther west you go on the 
North American continent, the milder the climate. 
Vancouver's Island, which is more than two hundred 
miles farther north than Toronto, has a climate like 
that of England ; instead of the extremes of Canada, 
as you go up the map, the difference between the west 
and east sides of the continent becomes as great as if 
we were to find in Newcastle the same temperature in 
winter as French settlers enjoy in Algiers. The musk 



The American Climate. 403 

oxen go more than four hundred miles farther north 
in summer, on the western, than they do on the eastern 
side, and the elk and moose-deer wander nearly six 
hundred miles farther north in the grass season, on 
the one than on the other. 

It is indeed more wonderful that the east side of 
America should be so cold than that the west should 
be so much milder. Toronto is on a line with the Py- 
renees and Florence, and yet has the climate of Russia 
instead of that of Southern France or Italy; and 
Quebec, with its frightful winters and roasting sum- 
mers, would stand nearly in the middle of France, 
if it were carried over in a straight line to Europe. 
Yet we know what a wonderful difference there is in 
England, which is, thus, far to the north of it. It 
is to the different distribution of land and sea in the 
two hemispheres, the mildness in the one case, and 
the coldness in the other, must be attributed. The 
sea which stretches round the British Islands, warmed 
by the influence of the Gulf Stream, is the great source 
of their comparative warmth, tempering, by its nearly 
uniform heat, alike the fierce blasts of the north and 
the scorching airs of the south. In Sir Charles LyelPs 
1 Principles of Geology/ you will find maps of the land 
and sea on the earth, so arranged that, in one, all the 
land would be comparatively temperate, while, in the 
other, it would all be comparatively cold. In America 
it is likely that the great mountains that run north and 



404 Old England again. 

south in three vast chains, beginning, in the west, 
with the Cascade Mountains, followed, at wide dis- 
tances, by the Rocky Mountains, rising in their vast 
height and length, as a second barrier, on the east of 
them, and by the vast nameless chain which stretches, 
on the east side of the continent, from the north 
shore of Lake Superior to the south of King William's 
Land, on the Arctic Ocean — modify the climate of 
the great North-west to some extent, but it is very 
hard to speak with any confidence on a point so little 
known. 

I have already said that I am glad I am back again 
in dear Old England, and I repeat it now that I am 
near the end of my story. I have not said anything 
about my stay in Nova Scotia, because it did not 
come within my plan to do so, but I include it in my 
thoughts when I say, that, after all I have seen these 
long years, I believe * there's no place like home.' If 
a boy really wish to get on and work as he ought, he 
will find an opening in life in his own glorious country, 
without leaving it for another. Were the same amount 
of labour expended by any one here, as I have seen 
men bestow on their wild farms in the bush, they 
would get as much for it in solid comfort and enjoy- 
ment, and would have around them through life the 
thousand delights of their native land. Some people 
can leave ^the scene of their boyhood and the friends 
of their youth, and even of their manhood, without 



Feelings towards Euglcwid. 405 

seeming to feel it, but I do not envy them their in- 
difference. I take no shame in confessing that I felt 
towards England, while away from it, what dear Oliver 
Goldsmith says so touchingly of his brother : — 

* Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee : 
Still to my country turns, with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 



THE END- 



john CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. 



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